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DOWNBEAT JEFF “TAIN” WATTS/LEWIS NASH/MATT WILSON // LES PAUL // FREDDY COLE // JOHN PATITUCCI<br />
NOVEMBER 2009<br />
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Á
DB Inside<br />
Departments<br />
8 First Take<br />
10 Chords & Discords<br />
13 The Beat<br />
16 Vinyl Freak<br />
20 Caught<br />
22 Players<br />
E.J. Strickland<br />
Aram Shelton<br />
Sunny Jain<br />
Pedro Giraudo<br />
53 Reviews<br />
76 Transcription<br />
78 Jazz On Campus<br />
82 Blindfold Test<br />
Bill Stewart<br />
CLAY WALKER<br />
Freddy Cole<br />
DOWNBEAT U DRUM SCHOOL<br />
26 Jeff “Tain” Watts/Lewis Nash/Matt Wilson<br />
Follow The Leaders // By Ken Micallef<br />
The history of jazz drummers as leaders is illustrious if not particularly longlived.<br />
Often relegated to “drummer only” or “non-musician” status by ignorant<br />
fellow musicians, jazz drummers have conquered the odds to create music easily<br />
on par with that of any instrumentalist. This summer, DownBeat invited three<br />
of today’s premier drummer/leader practitioners to discuss their art, their drumming<br />
and their place in the lineage of the legends who preceded them.<br />
32 Art Blakey<br />
Classic Interview:<br />
Bu’s Delights and Laments<br />
By John Litweiler // March 25, 1976<br />
34 Toolshed<br />
44<br />
38 Master Class<br />
by Mat Marucci<br />
Features<br />
40 Les Paul<br />
In Praise of a Master<br />
By Frank-John Hadley<br />
44 Freddy Cole<br />
Plays Your Song<br />
By Ted Panken<br />
48 John Patitucci<br />
At the Crossroads of Melody, Rhythm and Harmony<br />
By Dan Ouellette<br />
64 Grant Geissman 65 Edward Simon Trio<br />
68 Steve Lehman 61 Fred Hersch<br />
6 DOWNBEAT November 2009<br />
Cover photography by Jimmy Katz
First Take<br />
By Ed Enright<br />
Jeff “Tain” Watts, Lewis Nash and Matt Wilson: an atmosphere of camaraderie<br />
JIMMY KATZ<br />
Drummers With Vision<br />
My friend Gilbert was a drummer with a vision: to lead his very own big<br />
band, his way. He invited me to join his group at its onset, during the summer<br />
of 1981. I accepted, mostly because of my fondness for him, and partly<br />
out of my enthusiasm for playing saxophone. I was only 14 at the time,<br />
but that decision has had a profound effect on me and the course my life<br />
has taken ever since.<br />
Gilbert rushed the beat like nobody’s business—partly out of youthful<br />
inexperience, but mostly out of genuine enthusiasm. And he didn’t exactly<br />
have what you’d call straightahead jazz chops. But that didn’t matter to us.<br />
He held it together. He held us together. He led a great band and he treated<br />
and paid everybody fairly. Gil made it fun. And he always sprung for<br />
beer—even though we were all well underage, even when we broke his<br />
rules and fought among ourselves and made the music feel like work.<br />
It was because of Gilbert that cats wanted to play, and stay, in the<br />
Outcasts.<br />
Gilbert was an orchestrator on a grand scale. No arranger or composer<br />
of music—he couldn’t even sing—he was a true leader who brought<br />
together friends from each side of the tracks for more than just gigs, but<br />
also matches of four-square, Euchre and football, not to mention rebelling<br />
against authority and subverting established social norms. There was a<br />
good reason why he named us the Outcasts. He loved our quirks and<br />
encouraged all of us to wear our individuality proudly.<br />
The Outcasts were, and still are, Gilbert’s band. He died young in<br />
1994, but the band lives on, just as he would have wanted it. His powerful<br />
presence, a source of true inspiration, continues to be felt, even in his<br />
absence.<br />
Reading over Ken Micallef’s cover story for this issue (see page 26) on<br />
drummers Jeff “Tain” Watts, Lewis Nash and Matt Wilson, I’m reminded<br />
of Gilbert and his way with an ensemble—not just because he was such a<br />
fine drummer-bandleader, but because of the atmosphere of camaraderie<br />
he created around him, because of his sheer magnetism. Not long into the<br />
article, I started to get a sense of just how fun it must be to hang out with<br />
these three ambitious guys, all of whom have their own visions and lead<br />
their own bands while managing to keep their egos in check.<br />
Drummers. Too frequently they get a bad rap they don’t deserve. But<br />
let’s face it, we need them, and we like being around them. And, in the<br />
case of my friend Gilbert, and departed legendary bandleaders such as Art<br />
Blakey and Mel Lewis, we sometimes miss them, too.<br />
DB<br />
8 DOWNBEAT November 2009
Chords & Discords<br />
time to choose new members for the Hall of<br />
Fame I hope someone remembers Red<br />
Norvo, a great musician who made enormous<br />
contributions to jazz yet somehow<br />
seems to be undervalued and overlooked.<br />
Ross Firestone<br />
randgfirestone@nyc.rr.com<br />
Philadelphia Gratitude<br />
Thank you for the great article about the<br />
Philadelphia Jazz Fair (“The Beat,” October). I<br />
can’t say enough good things about the job<br />
that Eric Fine did in researching and writing<br />
the piece. It’s great to see Jymie Merritt and<br />
Trudy Pitts receive some national recognition<br />
at this time in their careers. I first subscribed<br />
to DownBeat in 1967 as a sophomore in high<br />
school. It’s still my favorite, and the definitive<br />
magazine of record in jazz.<br />
Don Glanden<br />
Division Head, Graduate Jazz Studies<br />
The University of the Arts<br />
Philadelphia<br />
Anderson’s Decade Count<br />
It was great to see the article on Fred<br />
Anderson (September). However, the writer<br />
makes a common error in his lead for the<br />
story. Anderson didn’t enter his eighth decade<br />
on his last birthday; he began the last year of<br />
his eighth decade.<br />
The first decade of his (or anyone’s) life<br />
ended when he completed his 10th year; or<br />
when he turned 11. So, following that count,<br />
next spring, Fred Anderson will begin his<br />
ninth decade on the planet. Here’s to wishing<br />
that Fred Anderson has many more years,<br />
many more decades, as an active musician<br />
and presenter.<br />
Herb Levy<br />
herb.levy@sbcglobal.net<br />
A Teddy Wilson Treasure<br />
I love the marvelous interview Tom Scanlan<br />
did with Teddy Wilson back in 1959 and<br />
hope you continue extracting such precious<br />
treasures from the DownBeat archives<br />
(September). By the way, when it becomes<br />
Recognizing Pettiford<br />
It has been long overdue for the music industry<br />
to openly acknowledge the unequaled<br />
genius of Oscar Pettiford and his legacy as<br />
one of the masters of American classical<br />
music: jazz. Thank you, DownBeat, for<br />
addressing this miscue by finally inducting<br />
him into the DownBeat Hall of Fame (“Critics<br />
Poll,” August). Those in the mainstream<br />
music industry who profit from the achievements<br />
of talented artists have historically<br />
ostracized Pettiford from his rightful rank<br />
among the jazz masters, primarily because he<br />
refused to compromise the integrity of his<br />
music for capital gain.<br />
Jacqueline Pettiford<br />
Chicago<br />
Cohn’s Off Night<br />
With reference to Edwin Bowers of the Al<br />
Cohn Jazz Society (“Chords,” September):<br />
Cohn may well be deserving of inclusion in<br />
the Hall of Fame. But from my viewpoint, he<br />
has never come to my full attention except for<br />
the one time I saw him in Perth, Australia, in<br />
1986. He must have had an off night because<br />
the music was unremarkable, he moaned and<br />
groaned and cut the gig short when his instrument<br />
started to fall apart (decompose).<br />
On another matter, it was good to see a<br />
Mike Nock recording covered in “Woodshed”<br />
(September). Mike spent several<br />
years in the United States playing with the<br />
likes of Dave Liebman and is now the Grand<br />
Master of Australian jazz piano. In whatever<br />
format he plays, he is always interesting and<br />
entertaining.<br />
Keith Penhallow<br />
Canberra, Australia<br />
Correction<br />
The Student Music Guide (October) printed<br />
an incorrect amount for undergraduate tuition<br />
at New York University. The correct amount<br />
for music students is $38,765 per year, which<br />
includes nonrefundable registration and services<br />
fees.<br />
Saxophone professor Michael Cox should<br />
have been listed as a faculty member of<br />
Captial University in Columbus, Ohio, in the<br />
Student Music Guide.<br />
DownBeat regrets the errors.<br />
Have a chord or discord E-mail us at editor@downbeat.com.
INSIDE THE BEAT<br />
14 Riffs<br />
16 Vinyl Freak<br />
20 Caught<br />
22 Players<br />
Cuban Bridge<br />
As U.S.–Cuban<br />
relations thaw,<br />
musicians discuss<br />
what American<br />
visitors could<br />
experience on<br />
the island<br />
It has been several years since most Americans<br />
could legally visit Cuba. Now, with Cuban-<br />
Americans free to visit their birthplace, speculation<br />
is rife that President Barack Obama will<br />
soon remove the Treasury Department restrictions<br />
that block American travel to the island.<br />
While it’s too early to determine what barriers<br />
could be lifted, the two countries are making<br />
tentative steps. This September, the U.S. State<br />
Department granted performance visas to Cuban<br />
singer Pablo Milanés and composer Zenaida<br />
Romeu—the first such visas granted for Cuban<br />
musicians since 2003.<br />
Of course, some music has always flowed<br />
across borders, with Cuban musicians such as<br />
saxophonist Paquito D’Rivera, pianist Gonzalo<br />
Rubalcaba and drummer Dafnis Prieto establishing<br />
themselves in the United States, and others<br />
like Jane Bunnett and Ry Cooder importing various<br />
elements of Cuban music to North America.<br />
But what musical riches await discovery by<br />
American tourists<br />
“Some might think the music is like it was 50<br />
years ago,” said Prieto, whose work as a drummer<br />
and composer has transcended traditional<br />
clavé rhythms. “Since that time, it has grown in<br />
many different ways, and there are local styles<br />
and variations wherever you go.”<br />
“Travelers are in for some surprises,” said<br />
Bunnett, the Toronto-based reed player who has<br />
been exploring Cuban music as a tourist and<br />
improviser for almost 30 years. “Every region<br />
has some musicians who are legends in their<br />
own town. It’s a situation akin to the early<br />
1960s, when researchers and journalists started<br />
discovering blues musicians in the rural South.”<br />
One thing that is significantly different from<br />
the era when part-time players like Mississippi<br />
Fred McDowell and Skip James re-surfaced is<br />
Hilario Durán<br />
the fact that most of the musicians who remain<br />
in Cuba are highly educated and experienced in<br />
performing for a variety of audiences.<br />
“People might think the music scene is not as<br />
sophisticated as it is,” said Roberto Occhipinti, a<br />
Canadian bassist who has produced recordings<br />
by Cuban ex-pats like Prieto and pianist Hilario<br />
Durán. “There’s a real strong sense of self<br />
among the musicians. Overall, there’s a depth to<br />
the place that you don’t see in many countries.<br />
Everyone sings and everyone dances.”<br />
“Cuba is a country where music is always<br />
there, no matter what happens,” said Durán.<br />
Not only is it deeply ingrained in the everyday<br />
cultural life of many Cubans, since the<br />
Communist revolution that brought Fidel Castro<br />
to power, music has been seen as one of the few<br />
ways to ease the harsh realities of life on the<br />
island. For budding musicians, joining a salsa<br />
band can be a ticket out, if only for a carefully<br />
monitored tour or a tourist-resort gig.<br />
These days, said Occhipinti, many of the<br />
country’s jazz musicians are as plugged-in to<br />
current trends as their contemporaries outside<br />
Cuba. “Today, the young jazz players in Cuba<br />
have access to a lot more information; some of<br />
them can connect to things through the<br />
Internet, they can hear anything that’s going<br />
on. They play like they’re at the university<br />
level in their teens, and they don’t have any<br />
distractions. There’s nothing to get between<br />
them and their music.”<br />
Drummer Francisco Mela recently returned<br />
to his native country after an absence of 10<br />
years. “I was really impressed with what I<br />
heard,” he said, “particularly among the drummers.<br />
I heard a lot of powerful players who<br />
have great control of dynamics and strong conceptual<br />
ideas. The music is really starting to<br />
swing more.”<br />
For music tourists new to Cuba, Durán has<br />
some recommendations for those wanting to<br />
hear the best of what Havana has to offer.<br />
“In the Vedado area, La Zorra y el Cuervo,<br />
Café Cantante and the Jazz Café all offer good<br />
music, and you can meet the musicians, as<br />
well,” Durán said. “In Miramar, on the west<br />
side of Havana, you can go to Casa de la<br />
Musica. In the heart of the city, you can find a<br />
very famous place called Callejon de Hamel,<br />
where every Saturday they dance and sing rumbas<br />
all afternoon.”<br />
Bunnett adds two more recommendations,<br />
UNIAC—the Cuban Union of Writers and<br />
BILL KING<br />
November 2009 DOWNBEAT 13
Riffs<br />
DL MEDIA<br />
Pérez Signed: Danilo Pérez stopped by<br />
the Mack Avenue Records booth along<br />
with saxophonist Tia Fuller at the Detroit<br />
Jazz Festival over Labor Day Weekend to<br />
officially announce his joining the label.<br />
His debut Mack Avenue disc is slated for<br />
2010. Details: mackavenuerecords.com<br />
Williams Celebration: New York’s Jazz<br />
at Lincoln Center will honor Mary Lou<br />
Williams’ centennial during the coming<br />
months. Events include a Jazz For<br />
Young People Concert devoted to her<br />
music on Nov. 7, Geri Allen and Geoff<br />
Keezer joining the center’s orchestra on<br />
Nov. 13 and 14 and Williams’ manager,<br />
Father Peter O’Brien, lecturing about her<br />
life in January. Details: jalc.org<br />
Artists—which features folkloric music, and<br />
Club Tropicale, located in a former beer factory.<br />
The saxophonist and her husband, trumpeter<br />
Larry Cramer, have also travelled extensively<br />
outside Havana since 2000. Among her favorite<br />
places are the Teatro Tomas Terry in<br />
Cienfuegos, a spectacular Italianate structure<br />
built by architect Lino Sanchez Marmol in 1889,<br />
and Casa de la Trova in Santiago de Cuba,<br />
which features bolero-son on the back patio and<br />
professional dancers upstairs.<br />
Santiago’s range of traditional musical styles<br />
leads Occhipinti to draw an American parallel:<br />
“People who visit Cuba for the music have to go<br />
to Havana; that’s like New York City for musicians.<br />
Santiago is like New Orleans in the sense<br />
that it’s where a lot of the music originated. It’s a<br />
completely different vibe than anywhere else.”<br />
Like New Orleans, Santiago reflects a significant<br />
French influence, dating back to an invasion<br />
in 1553, and more recently to the wave of<br />
Haitian refugees that followed the slave revolt of<br />
1791. Another important center of Haitian influence<br />
is the central city of Camagüey, home to a<br />
10-piece a cappella choir called Grupo Vocal<br />
Desandann that Bunnett has featured on two<br />
recordings. Their close harmony and floating<br />
rhythms are substantially different than music<br />
usually associated with Cuba.<br />
Bunnett’s 2006 recording Radio Guantanamo<br />
reflected yet another strand of the country’s<br />
music little heard outside of the island.<br />
“Changüi is the funkiest music I’ve heard<br />
there,” she said. “It’s highly syncopated and<br />
interactive, and the bongos improvise, unlike the<br />
congas in most Cuban music.”<br />
“Anyone who thinks they know Cuban<br />
music, based on what they’ve heard over the<br />
past 20 years, is wrong,” said Occhipinti.<br />
“People don’t realize things like the huge<br />
Jamaican influence that exists in central Cuba,<br />
for example, or the fact that the Buena Vista<br />
Social Club only represents a style that’s prevalent<br />
in Santiago de Cuba.”<br />
Mela believes that American tourists are in<br />
for a great time when they are finally allowed to<br />
come to Cuba. “Everybody’s going to take them<br />
to the best places, and it’s going to be scary.<br />
There are a lot of hungry musicians waiting to<br />
show what they’ve got.”<br />
Among the hungry and talented, Durán<br />
points to pianists Rolando Luna and Harold<br />
Lopez-Nusa, guitarist Jorge Luis Chicoy and<br />
drummer Oliver Valdes.<br />
When the borders open, foreign audiences<br />
will also be delighted to discover musicians<br />
like Giraldo Piloto, a muscular, exuberant<br />
drummer in his mid-40s who is reminiscent of<br />
Billy Cobham in his Mahavishnu Orchestra<br />
years, and, Miguel Maranda, a Jaco Pastoriusinfluenced<br />
bassist who simultaneously plays<br />
percussion.<br />
“Cuba is such a deeply cultural place,” said<br />
Prieto, “that people are going to be able to see<br />
musical distinctions wherever they go.”<br />
—James Hale<br />
Brubeck Honored: Dave Brubeck will<br />
become a Kennedy Center Honoree at<br />
a ceremony on Dec. 6. The gala at the<br />
New York cultural institution will be<br />
broadcast on CBS on Dec. 29.<br />
Details: kennedy-center.org<br />
Lofty Sounds: New York radio station<br />
WNYC and National Public Radio affiliates<br />
will begin airing tapes that were<br />
made in photographer and jazz fan W.<br />
Eugene Smith’s loft during the ’50s and<br />
’60s. Premiering on Nov. 16, these tapes<br />
include rehearsals and unguarded<br />
moments featuring Thelonious Monk,<br />
Zoot Sims and Jim Hall. Details: wnyc.org<br />
Sinatra Vino: Frank Sinatra’s estate<br />
has released a limited-production Napa<br />
Valley cabernet sauvignon called “Come<br />
Fly With Me.” Details: sinatra.com<br />
RIP, Connor: Singer Chris Connor died<br />
of cancer in Toms River, N.J., on Aug.<br />
29. She was 81. Known for her cool,<br />
low-vibrato style, Connor sang with the<br />
Stan Kenton band, before going solo<br />
and recording such hits as “All About<br />
Ronnie” and “Trust In Me.”<br />
DB<br />
Saxophonist<br />
Nathanson Turns<br />
On Poetic Muse<br />
Best known for his work with The Jazz<br />
Passengers, saxophonist Roy Nathanson<br />
has emerged with a book of poems,<br />
Subway Moon (Buddy’s Knife Editions).<br />
It coincides with an album of the same<br />
name (yellowbird records) with his band<br />
Sotto Voce.<br />
“I would alternate from watching people<br />
to somehow letting my mind take its<br />
own ride,” Nathanson said. “I started writing and<br />
reading tons of poetry on the subway traveling<br />
from Brooklyn to my teaching job in Manhattan,<br />
and found that this was the only place I could<br />
write. It was a whole other format of improvisation<br />
for exploring emotional and philosophical<br />
territory—a different way to dance through the<br />
edges of my history other than playing my horn.<br />
“Eventually, I had this manuscript,” he continued.<br />
“Then, some time in 2006 or ’07, I got a<br />
grant from Chamber Music America to write a<br />
full length ‘song cycle’ around these poems for<br />
The Jazz Passengers. Werner Aldinger of<br />
enja/yellowbird Records in Munich wanted to<br />
put out the CD and said he knew Renate Da Rin,<br />
Roy Nathanson<br />
who had a new small press in Koln that had just<br />
published writing by Henry Grimes and William<br />
Parker. The company had this great name,<br />
Buddy’s Knife Editions—for Buddy Bolden—<br />
and the plan was to put them both out together.”<br />
During the course of his career, Nathanson<br />
said he “sort of organically drifted into writing<br />
poetry. When I joined The Lounge Lizards I’d<br />
been living for years in the East Village and<br />
was as much a part of the ‘downtown’ theater<br />
world as the jazz world—and they were totally<br />
different. The Passengers was a way of melding<br />
these worlds, and the surreal songs/sketches<br />
I wrote or appropriated acted as an engine to<br />
achieve that end.”<br />
—John Ephland<br />
JANE MEYERS<br />
14 DOWNBEAT November 2009
DOWNBEAT ARCHIVES<br />
Freedom, Honesty<br />
Defined Rashied Ali<br />
Rashied Ali, who helped expand the drummer’s<br />
role through his polyrhythmic work with John<br />
Coltrane and many others since the mid–’60s,<br />
died of a heart attack in New York on Aug. 12.<br />
He was 76.<br />
“His technique poured from all kinds of<br />
places,” said bassist Henry Grimes. “Most of the<br />
time, it was unbelievable.”<br />
While Ali remains best known for stretching<br />
far beyond standard jazz swing time on such<br />
albums as Coltrane’s Meditations (where he<br />
played alongside Elvin Jones) and Interstellar<br />
Space (a sax-drums duo), his early years were<br />
more straightforward. Born Robert Patterson, he<br />
grew up in Philadelphia, studied under Philly<br />
Joe Jones, played r&b with singers like Big<br />
Maybelle and served in an army band during the<br />
Korean War.<br />
In the early ’60s, Ali moved to New York<br />
and became engrossed in the burgeoning freejazz<br />
scene, performing with Albert Ayler,<br />
Archie Shepp and Pharoah Sanders before joining<br />
Coltrane in 1965.<br />
After Coltrane’s death two years later, Ali<br />
spent time in Europe, but returned to New York<br />
in the early ’70s and started the performance<br />
space Ali’s Alley in 1973, which remained open<br />
for six years. He also formed Survival Records,<br />
which continues to release his material.<br />
By the early ’90s, Ali began re-examining his<br />
work with Coltrane and Ayler through the group<br />
Prima Materia.<br />
“The way Rashied would play the drum set<br />
came out of the jazz tradition,” said Prima<br />
Materia saxophonist Allan Chase. “It had a<br />
swing, but when he was playing free, there were<br />
multiple things going on. It was like looking<br />
through a kaleidoscope—broken up, but everything<br />
had its integrity.”<br />
That integrity included his bandleading,<br />
according to Chase.<br />
“He was very funny, mentoring, energetic,<br />
not at all shrouded in mystery,” Chase said.<br />
“Rashied looked us in the eye and could be complimentary,<br />
critical. You could tell he was telling<br />
the truth.”<br />
—Aaron Cohen<br />
November 2009 DOWNBEAT 15
By John Corbett<br />
United Front<br />
Path With A Heart<br />
(RPM RECORDS, 1980)<br />
MICHAEL JACKSON<br />
United Front is usually cited as<br />
one of the founding ensembles<br />
of the new Asian-American jazz<br />
movement in the 1980s. The<br />
San Francisco quartet is best<br />
known for its work with drummer<br />
Anthony Brown, who<br />
joined in 1981, but they had<br />
already made this great record<br />
by then with Carl Hoffman in<br />
the percussion role. The rest of<br />
the band was as it remained,<br />
with bassist Mark Izu, saxophonist<br />
Lewis Jordan and<br />
trumpeter George Sams. I was<br />
a freshman in college, working<br />
the graveyard shift at WBRU in<br />
Providence, R.I., when my jazz<br />
buddies there hipped me to this<br />
wonderful, now woefully scarce item. It<br />
was in heavy rotation from midnight to 3<br />
a.m. for a few seasons.<br />
Twenty-eight years since I first heard it,<br />
Path With A Heart endures the test of<br />
time. Its working model is certainly the Art<br />
Ensemble of Chicago, replete with intrusions<br />
of “little instruments” played by the<br />
ensemble members. Hoffman’s “Feel<br />
Free” starts with ratchet noises, arco<br />
bass, bicycle horns and sparse altissimo<br />
horn squeaks and multiphonic honks,<br />
before Izu kicks into the buoyant groove<br />
underpinning the sweet and sour tune to<br />
his delightful “Don’t Lose Your Soul,”<br />
which includes an awkward time shift<br />
much like those on some AEC’s classics.<br />
The more swing-based pieces have that<br />
tasty off/on-ness that I associate with<br />
Roscoe Mitchell and gang, as well as Fred<br />
Hopkins (whose playing Izu often recalls).<br />
No idea where he went, but Hoffman<br />
sounds perfectly at home here, breaking<br />
up a groove or bolstering it. Though they<br />
don’t have household name recognition,<br />
Sams and Jordan are worthy figures, conversant<br />
in the Ornette Coleman-derived<br />
post-bop vocabulary, deep in the thick of<br />
the milieu of “new architecture” that the<br />
Midwest’s AACM and Black Artists Group<br />
had so copiously spread around the globe<br />
starting in the late ’60s. Sams’ “March In<br />
Ostinato” starts the B-side with a very<br />
Anthony Braxton-ish composition, the<br />
hyper-extended theme bounding off<br />
Hoffman’s press rolls.<br />
These fellows had their own thing, too,<br />
bringing in pan-Asian instruments and<br />
ideas. With its sheng and nobbed gongs,<br />
“Forgotten Spirits” has a gagaku element,<br />
which was certainly unusual at the time,<br />
anticipating the full-on Asian-American<br />
jazz developments from Jon Jang, Glenn<br />
Horiuchi and Fred Ho, signaled by the first<br />
Asian-American Jazz Festival in San<br />
Francisco, which was held in 1981. RPM<br />
was an artist-run label organized by<br />
United Front; pianist Jang’s LPs Jang<br />
(which featured the quartet) and Are You<br />
Chinese Or Charlie Chan (which featured<br />
members of the group), as well as the<br />
foursome’s Ohm: Unit Of Resistance, were<br />
released on RPM in the years following<br />
Path With A Heart, which was the label’s<br />
debut. RPM was defunct by the end of the<br />
’80s and much of their activity shifted to<br />
Asian Improv Records. United Front also<br />
recorded for the German SAJ label, a sister<br />
to Free Music Productions. This release<br />
remains incredibly rare, so much so that a<br />
Google search barely yields anything. If<br />
that’s the measure of things that are truly<br />
obscure nowadays, this album doesn’t<br />
deserve to be so hidden from view. DB<br />
E-mail the Vinyl Freak: vinylfreak@downbeat.com<br />
More than 60 years separate the first jazz recording in 1917 and the introduction of the CD in the early ’80s.<br />
In this column, DB’s Vinyl Freak unearths some of the musical gems made during this time that have yet to be reissued on CD.<br />
16 DOWNBEAT November 2009
COURTESY OF BBC AMERICA<br />
Julian Barratt as<br />
Howard Moon<br />
British Comedian Brings Jazz<br />
Background to Hit TV Series<br />
The premise of the popular British comedy series, “The Mighty Boosh,”<br />
may be familiar: Earnest amateur jazz keyboardist Howard Moon (Julian<br />
Barratt) tries to make his glam rocker friend Vince Noir (Noel Fielding)<br />
interested in more serious music. But the adventures that spin out from<br />
these conversations become anything but standard. They can involve<br />
demonic grandmothers inviting Armageddon. Usually, Moon and Noir’s<br />
rescue depends on a drug-addicted shaman and a talking gorilla.<br />
No matter how fantastical these journeys become, they retain one sense<br />
of grounded realism, which stems from Barratt’s actual past as a jazz guitar<br />
prodigy. He and Fielding base their musical differences in “The Mighty<br />
Boosh” on their own clashes (both co-write the show).<br />
“When Noel and I met, he never knew anyone who was into jazz—he<br />
lived in a different sort of world than mine,” Barratt said. “So he was<br />
always taking the mickey out of me for liking it, and we found that amusing,<br />
so we ramped up that dynamic.”<br />
Barratt’s musical world formed as he grew up in Leeds, and his parents<br />
took him to see John Scofield, Herbie Hancock and Weather Report when<br />
they performed in England. Around that time, he became a serious young<br />
musician and attended the late British jazz trumpeter Ian Carr’s summer<br />
programs. Still, even after touring with such bands as the jazz-funk fusion<br />
Groove Solution, Barratt gave up music for comedy while attending the<br />
University of Reading.<br />
When Barratt and Fielding teamed up in the ’90s, their stage show<br />
turned into a radio program and then “The Mighty Boosh” debuted on<br />
BBC television in 2004. This year, the Adult Swim cable network picked<br />
it up in the United States and the series’ three volumes are now available<br />
on DVD in the U.S. (through BBC America).<br />
Jazz musicians—real and fictional—are name-checked throughout the<br />
series, and improvisation runs throughout Barratt and Fielding’s comic<br />
style. Barratt adds that when he composes the songs for each episode, narratives<br />
require him to draw from a wide musical background.<br />
“If Noel comes up with a character, and it’s a transsexual merman who<br />
preys on sailors, the music would be a strange Rick James fusion,” Barratt<br />
said. “It’s funny to juxtapose sea creatures and funk.”<br />
In the future, Barratt would like to delve deeper into jazz’s comic tradition,<br />
mentioning Slim Gaillard as an example. A few prominent American<br />
jazz musicians are already fans of “The Mighty Boosh,” including<br />
Scofield, who got turned on to the program from his daughter.<br />
“I thought the episodes were hilarious,” Scofield said. “There were so<br />
many references to jazz in their dialogues, and I knew right away that<br />
someone there was a real jazz aficionado with a wry sense of humor.”<br />
Scofield and Barratt have since become friendly, which the one-time<br />
jazz student sounds like he can hardly believe.<br />
“All these people who are my heroes from a previous life,” Barratt<br />
said, “I’m getting to hear from them in this world.” —Aaron Cohen
Caught<br />
Umbria Streamlines,<br />
Still Takes Risks<br />
George Lewis<br />
Craftsmanship and proportion infuse the culture of Perugia, home of the<br />
Umbria Summer Jazz Festival, which ran July 10–19 this year. Festival<br />
president Carlo Pagnotti rose to the challenge of operating under a tighter<br />
budget than in previous years while maintaining the festival’s high standard<br />
of refinement.<br />
Pagnotti used only one theater for indoor events. But he left intact the<br />
customary mix of first-rate blues, r&b, New Orleans and world music acts<br />
who perform day-long, free outdoor concerts, among them singer-songwriter-guitarist<br />
K.J. Denhert and her top-shelf New York band as well as<br />
the intense soul singer Vaneese Thomas. Vocalist Allan Harris and his<br />
trio, performing Nat Cole repertoire, also played outdoors. Indeed, Cole<br />
was a festival trope—George Benson, on tour with an orchestra-supported<br />
Cole extravaganza, replicated the master’s every inflection and tonal<br />
nuance. Cole’s brother Freddy transformed the Hotel Brufani into an<br />
Italian version of Bradley’s for his 10-night run, which was this year’s<br />
only extended residency (multiple extended residences had been a trademark<br />
of past festivals).<br />
Other main stage bookings included adult pop and mainstream jazz.<br />
James Taylor brought a great band, including Steve Gadd and Larry<br />
Goldings. Burt Bacharach presented a so-cheesy-it-was-hip self-retrospective.<br />
On the jazz side, Chick Corea and Stefano Bollani performed a spontaneously<br />
improvised duet on the standard repertoire. Alto saxophonist<br />
Francesco Cafiso augmented Jazz at Lincoln Center’s swinging, pan-stylistic<br />
set; the Sicilian wunderkind saxophonist wailed on Sherman Irby’s<br />
surging arrangement of Lou Donaldson’s “Blues Walk.” With his own<br />
quartet, Cafiso projected a lyric voice informed by Charlie Parker, Lee<br />
Konitz and Phil Woods alongside such ’70s radicals as Anthony Braxton<br />
and Julius Hemphill.<br />
Also representing Italy, pianist Enrico Pieranunzi played original compositions<br />
with his quintet, and drummer Roberto Gatto rearranged ’70s<br />
British prog rock for octet. Alto and soprano saxophonist Rosario Giuliani<br />
and pianist Dado Moroni blew soulfully in Joe Locke’s chamber trio.<br />
Trumpet veteran Enrico Rava helmed a post-boomer quintet with trombonist<br />
Gianluca Petrella.<br />
Among the other main acts, Dave Douglas presented Brass Ecstasy, a<br />
Lester Bowie homage comprising well-wrought originals that extracted<br />
maximum tonal color from French horn player Vincent Chancey, trombonist<br />
Luis Bonilla and tubist Marcus Rojas, propelled by inventive<br />
rhythms and textures from Nasheet Waits, channeling an inner Max<br />
Roach. Road-weary John Scofield kicked out the jams with his Piety<br />
Street quartet. Richard Galliano presented nuevo tango and beyond with<br />
United Nations quartet.<br />
A pair of experimental projects took a certain courage to book, especially<br />
considering Italy’s troubled economy. A three-day, six-concert presentation<br />
by Chicago’s cohesive 21-piece AACM Great Black Music<br />
Ensemble under the putative leadership of George Lewis featured compositions<br />
by AACM second- and third-wavers Lewis, Nicole Mitchell,<br />
Douglas Ewart, Mwata Bowden and Ernest Dawkins, and by fourthwavers<br />
Tomeka Reid and Renee Baker. A choir of four perpetually intune<br />
voices-as-instruments, Reid and Baker’s cello and violin, Lewis’<br />
electronics, two basses and a trapset-and-percussion combination seamlessly<br />
integrated with a five-saxophone, three-trumpet, two-trombone big<br />
band and exploited the unit’s singular instrumentation. The bacchanalian<br />
end-of-festival event packed Piazza 4 Novembre, as a throng of revelers<br />
grooved to Puerto Rican master conguero Giovanni Hidalgo and Cuban<br />
master trapsetter Horacio “El Negro” Hernandez alongside a large ensemble<br />
of young Kenyan hand drummers and dancers. —Ted Panken<br />
GIANCARLO BELFIORE–UMBRIA JAZZ<br />
Copenhagen Jazz Festival Revisits History While Embracing Youth<br />
The Copenhagen Jazz Festival is a varied<br />
Chick Corea<br />
extravaganza that leans away from the summer<br />
festival blockbusters and makes sure to<br />
demonstrate diversity. That was particularly<br />
the case this year for its 31st edition, which<br />
ran July 3–12.<br />
The city’s must-visit list includes the Jazz<br />
Cup, home of an impressive music store, jazz<br />
club and also headquarters of the Danish<br />
magazine Jazz Special. On a Saturday afternoon<br />
during the festival, one could catch the<br />
nimble and thoughtful pianist Peter<br />
Rosenthal’s trio and then venture over to the<br />
dreamily lavish Frederiksburg Garden, where<br />
We Three—saxophonist David Liebman,<br />
bassist Steve Swallow and drummer Adam<br />
Nussbaum—dished up lyricism and feistier energies in a garden party-like<br />
setting as a peacock strolled the grounds.<br />
Fascinating and cool young Danish singer Maria Laurette Friis presented<br />
her distinctive indie-pop in the hip, renovated old fishing vessel MS<br />
Stubnitz—retooled as a floating cultural center with an experimental<br />
KRISTOFFER POULSEN<br />
music bent. But Friis’ greater artistic coup<br />
was a tribute to Billie Holiday’s final<br />
album, Lady In Satin. Via Friis, Lady<br />
Day’s innate melancholic sublimity was<br />
given a surprisingly bewitching fresh<br />
twist—something akin to an indie<br />
shoegazer approach.<br />
A different flavor of introspective<br />
Scandinavian musical demeanor marks<br />
the special touch of seasoned Danish<br />
trumpeter Jens Winther, who played outdoors<br />
by a lake in Ørstedsparken—one of<br />
several tranquil parks dotting this uncommonly<br />
beautiful and green city.<br />
Among official festival headliners,<br />
Chick Corea showed up for a solo concert<br />
early in the festival’s schedule, and a Nina Simone tribute included Dianne<br />
Reeves and Angelique Kidjo. In the delightfully bizarre context of the<br />
famed, kitsch-flecked Tivoli Gardens, Yusef Lateef’s Universal Quartet<br />
combined regular ally Adam Rudolph on percussion alongside Danish<br />
percussionist Kreston Osgood and dazzling trumpeter Kasper Tranberg.<br />
20 DOWNBEAT November 2009
Towards festival’s end, Dee Dee Bridgewater performed her easier-does-it<br />
charts with the fine Tivoli Big Band and Orchestra, outdoors in the<br />
Gardens, disseminating musical goodness into many corners of the<br />
sprawling compound.<br />
But the most culturally and indigenously significant concert this year, if<br />
not the greatest musical success, involved a certain historic Danish-<br />
American connection. Danish trumpeter Palle Mikkelborg, who wrote the<br />
moody and memorable work AURA for Miles Davis 25 years ago<br />
(released as a two-disc album by Columbia in 1989), was commissioned<br />
to revisit the extended composition with a fresh conceptual attitude. The<br />
result, realized by a large and multi-limbed ensemble, was a strangely<br />
uneven but ultimately intriguing suite. Many of the meeker passages were<br />
laid out in the first half, including a goofy disco take on “What’s New,”<br />
which brought to mind Herb Alpert more than late-era Davis. But the writing<br />
got tougher, more complex and more evocative as the program progressed<br />
and the sundry facets of the chamber ensemble-meets-big band<br />
group were put to good use.<br />
In that more muscular and enigmatic finale, we could, in fact, easily<br />
imagine Davis’ sonic voice doing its artistic bidding. —Josef Woodard<br />
Saxophonist Allen Slyly<br />
Stretches Out at Vanguard<br />
J.D. Allen<br />
J.D. Allen sings on his tenor<br />
saxophone. No hijinks, mind<br />
games, bravado—just song,<br />
lyrically intact and rhythmically<br />
invigorating. In a nutshell,<br />
that’s what Allen triumphantly<br />
showcased on Aug. 12, the<br />
second night of his weeklong<br />
debut at New York’s Village<br />
Vanguard with simpatico band<br />
mates Gregg August on bass<br />
and Rudy Royston on drums.<br />
In an alluring 70-minute set,<br />
Allen fluidly weaved through<br />
14 tunes—all short, but pleasing<br />
takes devoid of lengthy<br />
wandering. This was in keeping<br />
with his most recent trio<br />
CD, Shine!, where the numbers<br />
range from two minutes to just longer than five.<br />
On the gleefully lopsided swing “Id,” introduced with a sly bow of<br />
respect to Sigmund Freud, Allen bellowed with a fresh, danceable sensibility.<br />
Throughout the set, he rarely overblew, even on the cooking “East<br />
Boogie,” where he extended his solo, and on the upbeat “Titus” where he<br />
sped through a torrent of tenor notes. Allen also avoided getting caught up<br />
in a whirlwind of improvisation that would’ve lost bearing to the song.<br />
Cases in point: the lyrical meditation “Se’Lah” and the reflective, hushed<br />
cover of the standard “Stardust,” which was a showstopper in its quiet<br />
beauty.<br />
When Allen slipped out of the spotlight, he crouched in the shadows at<br />
the back of the stage near the velvet curtains and comped for August’s<br />
closely imagined solos. Royston was spotlighted on “Conjuration Of<br />
Angels” (composed by Butch Morris) where his spanked and rolling<br />
rhythms drove the proceedings.<br />
Mainstream jazz sometimes cloaks itself with esotericism, but Allen<br />
steered clear of that at the Vanguard. He chose an organic path where he<br />
became engaged, had his say—stretching economically and to the point—<br />
then slid out. It wasn’t that he didn’t have much to express; it’s more that<br />
Allen spread his expression across the set in a multitude of songs versus an<br />
immature—or insecure—saxist blowing his wad on boring multiple-chorus<br />
exhibitionism.<br />
—Dan Ouellette<br />
JOHN ROGERS/WGBO<br />
November 2009 DOWNBEAT 21
Players<br />
JACK VARTOOGIAN/FRONTROWPHOTOS<br />
E.J. Strickland ; Search and Explore Mission<br />
“When I first got to New York, I was very aggressive on the instrument,”<br />
said E.J. Strickland of his drumset approach when he entered the fray in<br />
New York City a decade ago.<br />
Now 30, Strickland, whose career over that duration splits evenly<br />
between traditional and more exploratory approaches to jazz, would learn<br />
lasting lessons on “how to support more and not be overbearing” from his<br />
various colleagues and employers. These include his identical twin,<br />
Marcus Strickland, as well as Russell Malone, Ravi Coltrane, Cassandra<br />
Wilson, the various members of the New Jazz Composers Octet and, more<br />
recently, the Night of the Cookers Sextet with Billy Harper and Charles<br />
Tolliver.<br />
“Russell was the first leader who told me I was overplaying, not really<br />
listening for what I could do for his group,” Strickland said. “He said,<br />
‘You don’t want to be too hip, because two hips make an ass.’ That stuck<br />
with me. The instrument itself is not designed to be understated. I needed<br />
to find a way to do what the drummers I respect did—to transcend the<br />
instrument, be able to play fast figures and complex rhythms with a lot of<br />
energy, but at a volume that’s balanced with the group. Finding that balance<br />
on the kit is hard to do.”<br />
Strickland demonstrates these investigations on his debut release, In<br />
This Day (StrickMusic). He propels his tenor saxophonist brother, alto<br />
saxophonist Jaleel Shaw, pianist Luis Perdomo, bassist Hans Glawischnig<br />
and conguero Pedro Martinez through a suite of melodic originals that<br />
blend highbrow jazz harmony with rhythms that morph in and out of<br />
swing and straight-eighth feels along with more overtly African and Afro-<br />
Caribbean sources. The horns sing in continual dialogue with the leader,<br />
who focuses less on bringing his technical legerdemain to the forefront<br />
than on deploying it to enhance the ensemble sound.<br />
“I didn’t have a clear idea how I wanted my group to sound,”<br />
Strickland said. “I was always writing, and could see that there was something<br />
developing with my own compositional voice. But I wasn’t sure<br />
what instruments I wanted to use. Some of my songs are very syncopated,<br />
so I wanted that percussive feeling in the horn parts. I grew up with<br />
Marcus, watched his rhythmic sensibility grow and develop, and that led<br />
me to want two mutually sensitive horn players who bounce off of each<br />
other rhythmically.”<br />
Educated in the rudiments by his father—a classical percussionist and<br />
proficient r&b and funk drummer—Strickland developed his ears during<br />
adolescence and teen years through countless hours playing duets with his<br />
brother. “It helped me focus on listening, to surrender to the ideas you’re<br />
hearing back towards you, as opposed to trying to force ideas to come<br />
out,” he said.<br />
While attending the New School in New York, Strickland—by then<br />
under the deep influence of Elvin Jones, Roy Haynes and Jeff Watts—<br />
studied with an all-star cohort of teachers, among them Joe Chambers (“he<br />
wanted me to respect the origins of certain rhythms”), Ralph Peterson (“he<br />
helped me develop my power and technique”), Carl Allen (“he focused on<br />
developing a beautiful sound on the kit”), Jimmy Cobb (“tips on the ride<br />
cymbal”) and Lewis Nash (“we worked on brush technique, timekeeping,<br />
soloing ideas”).<br />
“I grabbed different things from everybody,” Strickland said. “It was a<br />
perfect place to open me up. Everyone around me was into so many different<br />
things, and I got into those things by hanging around them and<br />
going to shows they were into.”<br />
This year, Strickland further displayed the increasing clarity of his<br />
drum conception on Ravi Coltrane’s open-ended quartet session, Blending<br />
Times (Savoy), and on his brother’s concurrent releases, Of Song (Criss<br />
Cross) and Idiosyncracies (StrickMusic).<br />
“Both groups have allowed me to be myself,” Strickland said. “Ravi<br />
gave me a lot of freedom, but he also pushed me to think out of the box, to<br />
use different feels, to search for something different.<br />
“Our open-mindedness is due to the pioneers—John Coltrane and<br />
Miles Davis were two of them—who had the courage to explore areas that<br />
others said they couldn’t,” he continued. “They opened up everything for<br />
us—we weren’t afraid to journey further into other genres, feels and<br />
rhythms. It was a natural progression. People broke cracks in the ceiling,<br />
and now the ceiling is broken. Almost everything that’s coming out today<br />
is a fusion of stuff, and some of the other genres are starting to incorporate<br />
more jazz into their thing. We think we’re respecting the tradition by continuing<br />
to search and explore.”<br />
—Ted Panken<br />
22 DOWNBEAT November 2009
Caption<br />
MARK SHELDON<br />
Aram Shelton ;<br />
Bay Area’s Chicago Ambassador<br />
Four years after reedist Aram Shelton left Chicago to resettle in<br />
Oakland, he remains inextricably linked to the Midwest. Along with<br />
studying electronic music at Mills College and working in Bay Area<br />
bands, he shuttles between the two cities because of what he calls “frustration<br />
with not having a band that can play all the time.”<br />
“The thing about playing with good musicians is that they’re always<br />
in demand,” Shelton said. “It’s hard to say, ‘Hey, can you do just this<br />
one band’ It’s not going to happen.”<br />
This year, his Singlespeed Music label has released two albums<br />
recorded with cohorts from both scenes, one by his free bop Ton Trio<br />
called The Way, and another all-improvised session, Last Distractions.<br />
Shelton also still works with Arrive, Jason Adasiewicz’s Rolldown and<br />
the Fast Citizens, all of them based in Chicago.<br />
“I get a lot out of playing with the musicians here, and for all of us to<br />
succeed, we need to keep these bands together and growing,” he said.<br />
“I’m also glad that the folks here allow me to come back and merge<br />
back into the scene so easily.”<br />
The Palm City, Fla., native moved to Chicago after earning his saxophone<br />
degree at the University of Florida in Gainesville in 1999. He<br />
formed the trio Dragons 1976 with drummer Tim Daisy and bassist<br />
Jason Ajemian, but as the combo started attracting attention for its first<br />
album his associates became increasingly busy with other commitments.<br />
Despite Shelton’s own steady playing opportunities in Chicago, better<br />
weather and other opportunities beckoned in California.<br />
“I wanted to explore the electronic side of what I was doing, and<br />
Mills was good because I was able to keep working on what I’d been<br />
doing, but also to get a degree for it and to learn more.”<br />
Shelton learned about recording, but he also immersed himself in<br />
Max/MSP sound processing. “I focused my work on electroacoustic<br />
pieces that are centered around extending the sounds of acoustic instruments<br />
via computer-based electronics and a technique I have named<br />
Phrase Modification, where phrases played on acoustic instruments are<br />
recorded and played back, but rearranged to create new instances.<br />
“An advantage I find in the Bay Area is that I can play more gigs<br />
with the same group,” he continued, “which allows the music to develop<br />
more, a side effect of the smaller scene.” Shelton’s just formed a new<br />
trio with drummer Weasel Walter and bassist Devin Hoff, while Fast<br />
Citizens recently released Two Cities (Delmark). Although Shelton’s<br />
work with electronics doesn’t figure into the ebullient music of Fast<br />
Citizens, it does reflect a commitment to eschewing endless strings of<br />
solos sandwiched by theme statements.<br />
Despite ongoing work with Chicagoans, Shelton seems content in<br />
Oakland. He mentioned that on the first Dragons 1976 European tour<br />
people would always ask about Chicago. “I was living on Oakland and<br />
Ajemian was living in New York,” he said. “It reinforced the idea that I<br />
didn’t need to be in one place.”<br />
—Peter Margasak<br />
November 2009 DOWNBEAT 23
Players<br />
Sunny Jain ;<br />
Personal Ragas<br />
In leading the band Red Baraat, drummer<br />
Sunny Jain finds himself standing<br />
in front of a half-dozen horn players<br />
and two percussionists. Rather than<br />
playing a trap set, he strikes the barrelshaped<br />
drum strapped across his<br />
chest. The two-headed bhangra dhol<br />
originated from India; it serves as the<br />
focal point of an ensemble Jain likens<br />
to a New Orleans brass band steeped<br />
in South Asian music.<br />
Red Baraat and the more conventionally<br />
configured Sunny Jain<br />
Collective place the drummer in the<br />
burgeoning vanguard of Indian-<br />
American jazz musicians. Though<br />
the groups differ stylistically, their<br />
respective missions remain the same:<br />
to create a hybrid not only reflecting<br />
Jain’s music background, but also his<br />
heritage.<br />
Jain’s parents emigrated around<br />
1970 from North India. Jain, who<br />
grew up in Rochester, N.Y., earned<br />
music degrees from Rutgers University<br />
and New York University. While<br />
Jain holds the bop tradition in high<br />
regard, he has no desire to revisit the era. He looks beyond Indian music,<br />
as well.<br />
“To just play jazz music straight-up like Philly Joe Jones was great for<br />
an educational purpose,” Jain said in his Brooklyn, N.Y., home. “But it<br />
wasn’t me. To play like Zakir Hussain on the drum set isn’t like me,<br />
either: I’m not a tabla player, I didn’t grow up in India and I didn’t grow<br />
SEBNEM TASCI<br />
Pedro Giraudo ; Shuffle Resistant<br />
Bassist and composer Pedro Giraudo fears that with the arrival of the iPod and the<br />
dreaded ringtone, people are becoming less tolerant of extended works, especially<br />
those with specific song sequencing.<br />
“The iPod was a great invention, but on the other hand, everything becomes<br />
background music,” said Giraudo, the leader of a 16-piece jazz orchestra that<br />
performs regularly at New York’s Jazz Gallery. “Recorded music was an<br />
amazing invention, but sometimes it takes away the experience of listening and<br />
focusing. I don’t know how many people actually sit down, listen and enjoy a<br />
CD nowadays.”<br />
While Giraudo is conscientious of making some concessions for his audience<br />
regarding some of its waning attention span, he is by no means giving in to technology’s<br />
whim. His new disc, El Viaje (PGM Music), affords an opulent listening<br />
experience of modern, orchestral jazz, brimming with passionate improvisations,<br />
deliberate contrapuntal melodies and plush harmonies. Indeed, some of the compositions<br />
would be considered long: The title track approaches the 20-minutes<br />
mark. Giraudo insists that El Viaje proceeds in such a purposeful manner that it<br />
would discourage iPod shuffling.<br />
“I put so much effort in deciding the song sequence. I’m quite sure that Duke<br />
Ellington really sat down and thought about things like this,” he said.<br />
Like Ellington, Giraudo, who refers to his 16-piece ensemble as a chamber jazz<br />
orchestra rather than a big band, writes melodies with specific musicians in mind.<br />
“Chamber ensemble usually refers to music that has one person per instrument,”<br />
Giraudo said. “So I think about each person in the ensemble playing. I’m<br />
ERIN O’BRIEN<br />
24 DOWNBEAT November 2009
up playing Hindustani classical music.<br />
“But what is me,” he continued, “is a confluence of these backgrounds<br />
and traditions kind of flowing together. And it’s not strictly Indian music<br />
and jazz. It’s Brit pop like New Order and the Cure. It’s Radiohead, it’s<br />
Smashing Pumpkins.”<br />
At a summer gig in a bar in Queens, Jain performed with pianist Steve<br />
Blanco, whose repertoire spans pop songs from the 1970s and 1980s. The<br />
trio’s reading of Pink Floyd’s “Us And Them” veered from trance-like to<br />
volatile. The Police’s “Synchronicity” included sharp tempo shifts and the<br />
song’s simple structure lent itself to the group’s penchant for free playing.<br />
“We can’t deny that groove we grew up with—the straight eighth-note<br />
feel—whether it’s rock or funk,” Jain said between sets. “You still need to<br />
know that vocabulary those bop masters laid out. But to play period music<br />
is to not be myself at this moment in time.”<br />
Jain recorded Red Baraat last fall, and will release an album early next<br />
year. The Sunny Jain Collective has issued several albums, and Jain has<br />
begun recording The Taboo Project, which will feature a cycle of six<br />
songs commissioned by Chamber Music America. Jain premiered the<br />
music in December 2007 at Joe’s Pub in Manhattan. Jain adapted the<br />
work of contemporary poets writing in Hindi, Urdu and English. The<br />
poets include Ali Husain Mir and Ifti Naseem, who tackle religious strife,<br />
domestic violence and homosexuality.<br />
“These are issues that are not comfortably and openly discussed or<br />
dealt with in South Asia. At the same time these are universal issues,”<br />
Jain said.<br />
In addition to original music, Jain wants to translate India’s music traditions<br />
to the confines of a jazz group. This songbook encompasses not<br />
just the ragas (melody) and tals (rhythm) common in Hindustani and<br />
Carnatic music, but also the music of Bollywood, religious songs and<br />
bhangra, a folkloric music in the Punjab region of both India and Pakistan.<br />
Jain compares this crosspollination to the manner in which jazz musicians<br />
adapt music from Broadway and Tin Pan Alley.<br />
“But at the end of the day, it’s not meant to be overt,” he said. “If I<br />
wanted to do that, I would hire a tabla player, I would hire a sitar player and<br />
I would say, ‘Hey, this is Indian jazz.’ There’s a few of us doing this here in<br />
New York, and we all have our own approach of expressing our cultural<br />
identity as Indian-Americans. This is my approach.” —Eric Fine<br />
lucky to have the same musicians for a very long time. Some of the guys<br />
have been in the band since 2000. We’ve developed a language within<br />
the band.”<br />
Hailing from Cordoba, Argentina, and born to a symphonic orchestraconducting<br />
father, it comes as no surprise that European classical music<br />
and tango also inform Giraudo’s musical language.<br />
“I’m not sure if you’ll call my music avant-garde, but in terms of the<br />
tango tradition, my music falls into the very modern tango,” Giraudo said.<br />
“There are some tango elements in my music, but they are very subtle. I<br />
think the most Argentinean element is the sense of nostalgia.”<br />
Giraudo trained early on classical violin and piano. As a teenager he<br />
strapped on the electric bass, initially playing rock and pop, which eventually<br />
led him to jazz. “Since I was in South America, most people’s concept<br />
of jazz is more jazz-fusion, so I was familiar with Chick Corea’s Elektric<br />
Band and Mike Stern.”<br />
When he arrived in the United States, Giraudo first wanted to study<br />
with Stern’s bassist Jeff Andrews. Eventually through contact with other<br />
students at the Manhattan School of Music, Giraudo got more exposure to<br />
jazz’s rich tradition. “I was pretty clueless at first,” Giraudo recalls. “For<br />
instance, I’d never heard of the name ‘Monk.’ I knew some things, but at<br />
first I thought Duke Ellington was Dizzy Gillespie.”<br />
El Viaje’s concept is also partially about his journey to becoming a<br />
new father as well as growing as a composer.<br />
“I definitely hear my voice clearer on this CD,” Giraudo said. “And my<br />
tendency is to write longer and longer pieces.”<br />
—John Murph<br />
November 2009 DOWNBEAT 25
DRUM<br />
JEFF “TAIN” WATTS<br />
LEWIS NASH<br />
MATT WILSON<br />
FOLLOW<br />
THE<br />
LEADERS<br />
By Ken Micallef // Photos by Jimmy Katz<br />
The history of jazz drummers as leaders is illustrious if not<br />
particularly long-lived. Often relegated to “drummer<br />
only” or “non-musician” status by ignorant fellow musicians,<br />
jazz drummers have conquered the odds to create music<br />
easily on par with that of any instrumentalist. Such<br />
drummer/leaders as Max Roach, Elvin Jones, Art Blakey, Chick<br />
Webb, Gene Krupa, Buddy Rich, Kenny Clarke and Mel Lewis<br />
forged the paths that today’s stylistically well-versed, multiinstrumental,<br />
compositionally adept drummers follow to<br />
advance their own art.<br />
Surrounded by the vintage drum sets of such legends as<br />
Rich, Krupa, Jones, Sonny Greer and Louis Bellson (and many<br />
more) found at Steve Maxwell Vintage and Custom Drums in<br />
New York, three of today’s premier drummer/leader practitioners<br />
sat down this summer to discuss their art, their drumming<br />
and their place in the lineage of the great drummer/leaders who<br />
preceded them.<br />
“Someone has to act, someone has to write and someone has<br />
to direct,” Lewis Nash says. “We’re stepping behind the camera.”<br />
Matt Wilson and Jeff “Tain” Watts share his attitude. All<br />
have released albums as leaders, worked with a diverse cadre of<br />
musicians and toured and developed numerous recent projects.<br />
Nash is perhaps the most recorded jazz drummer of his generation,<br />
with sides as far ranging as Tommy Flanagan, Joe<br />
Lovano, Willie Nelson, Kenny Burrell, Betty Carter and Oscar<br />
Peterson. Most recently, Nash co-led The Blue Note Seven, and<br />
he is an ongoing musical director at Lincoln Center. His solo<br />
albums include Rhythm Is My Business and Stompin’ At The<br />
Savoy. His fourth CD as a leader includes his current quintet and<br />
is set for an early 2010 release; he can also be found on upcoming<br />
CDs from the Dizzy Gillespie Alumni All-Star Big Band<br />
and Dee Dee Bridgewater.<br />
Wilson’s latest quartet album, That’s Gonna Leave A Mark<br />
(his eighth as a leader), follows work as a leader with Arts and<br />
Crafts, Carl Sandburg Project, Futurists, Trio M and sideman<br />
work with Joe Lovano, Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music<br />
Orchestra, Marty Ehrlich/Ray Anderson Quartet, Elvis Costello,<br />
Jane Ira Bloom, Lee Konitz and Myra Melford.<br />
Watts, after long stints with the brothers Marsalis (he departed<br />
Branford’s group in mid-2009), recorded his first solo effort<br />
with 1991’s Megawatts, followed 10 years later by such well<br />
received albums as Citizen Tain, Bar Talk and, most recently,<br />
Watts, which documents his signature compositions and his<br />
November 2009 DOWNBEAT 27
mad sense of humor. Watts also appears on<br />
upcoming releases from Odean Pope (Odean’s<br />
List), John Beasley (Positootly), a live CD with<br />
Pat Martino and one from David Kikoski<br />
(Mostly Standards).<br />
Lists, credits and factoids say little about the<br />
raw talent, wisdom and skill each of these men<br />
brings to bear on the jazz world at large. Their<br />
grasp of history is sure, their views on bandleading<br />
challenging, and their camaraderie and joy in<br />
discussing their craft obvious. Most definitely,<br />
it’s time to give the drummer some.<br />
From left: Wilson, Watts and Nash play vintage kits that once belonged to jazz legends Joe Morello, Elvin Jones<br />
and Kenny Clarke, respectively, in the museum section of Steve Maxwell Vintage and Custom Drums.<br />
DownBeat: Why did each of you pursue<br />
becoming a leader and not remain a sideman<br />
only<br />
Lewis Nash: For me, it was seeing and talking<br />
to people like Max Roach, Elvin Jones, Art<br />
Blakey, even Billy Higgins—who, though he<br />
didn’t compose, led with what he was doing.<br />
Those people have influenced all of us to have a<br />
certain stature at the drums and be able to dictate<br />
certain things from the drums. All of us have<br />
ideas, things we jot down and file away, and<br />
because we’ve played with so many different<br />
people as sidemen, we get a lot of ideas from all<br />
these different directions.<br />
Matt Wilson: That’s why it makes for interesting<br />
bandleading, because we play with so many<br />
people. And the big picture presentation can be<br />
different because we are thinking about so many<br />
elements in the music, including groove.<br />
Jeff “Tain” Watts: I came up with these different<br />
groups mostly playing original music. I<br />
didn’t have a very long apprenticeship with<br />
older musicians to do a lot of interpretation with<br />
standard repertoire; I just started to accumulate a<br />
lot of original music. I started doing gigs and<br />
Branford signed me to Sony. Then I always<br />
found myself at a balance between being somebody<br />
in the band playing and trying to have a<br />
musical presentation. There are people who<br />
come out to see you play, so I have to remind<br />
myself to take a drum solo. You’ll look up in the<br />
middle of the gig and people will be looking at<br />
you for some drum excitement! [laughs]<br />
DB: What significant events contributed to your<br />
growth as leaders<br />
Nash: After a while there are certain things you<br />
want to express, and you’re not able to express<br />
them in any other situation, so you’ve got to create<br />
a situation. Sometimes I would be the leader<br />
in a situation where I wasn’t playing my<br />
arrangements or musical repertoire. Maybe I<br />
was the musical director, and since you have a<br />
leader’s mindset you know how to pull the elements<br />
together and make the performance come<br />
off. When leading, you’re thinking of a lot of<br />
different things ...<br />
Watts: ... the program ...<br />
Nash: ... pacing of the set ...<br />
Watts: ... things that don’t have anything to do<br />
with music!<br />
Nash: Sometimes you have to pull the band<br />
back with the drums: “OK, let’s go a different<br />
place!”<br />
DB: Does all of that somehow make you a better<br />
drummer<br />
Nash: Maybe all of that makes you a better<br />
overall musician moreso than making you a better<br />
drummer.<br />
Wilson: You think about some classic big band<br />
drummers—maybe it was a different vibe,<br />
maybe their presentation was more about that.<br />
Maybe someone like Louie Bellson or Chick<br />
Webb, they still really cared about the music.<br />
DB: What else contributes to your evolution as a<br />
leader<br />
Watts: You’re in all these situations playing for<br />
different bandleaders who are making decisions<br />
about repertoire and about presentation. You get<br />
all these little lessons: How to make sure that<br />
everyone is on the bus at the same time. Get a<br />
room list so you can call the bass player if he<br />
oversleeps. And it’s all in there whether you are<br />
actually going to be a bandleader part time or<br />
full time. I just began accumulating music, and I<br />
got a deal, and part of that is trying to sell the<br />
record that you made. I’m into documenting<br />
compositions and putting together a set of music<br />
and looking at the people and trying to shape a<br />
set to make them feel a certain way.<br />
DB: How do you gauge an audience like that<br />
Watts: Sometimes I just look at the types of<br />
people or age groups. If I’m playing my music,<br />
I’ll choose a piece that might strike a familiar<br />
chord with an older crowd, for instance. There’s<br />
a traditional jazz crowd that you can play a whole<br />
set of jazz to, but unless there’s something that’s<br />
right down the middle or a blues or something<br />
really swinging, they won’t be fulfilled.<br />
DB: So, Jeff, you wouldn’t bring out Zappaesque<br />
material like “The Devil’s Ring Tone: The<br />
Movie” from Watts for a roomful of geezers<br />
Nash: I like the way you put that. [laughs]<br />
“Hmmm, we have a bunch of geezers out there<br />
tonight!”<br />
Watts: There’s a lot of old hippies out there,<br />
too, some deadheads. You have to feel them out.<br />
I try to get the different food groups together in<br />
the first few tunes, maybe something exciting,<br />
something swinging, something with a groove<br />
and go from there.<br />
Wilson: I don’t change my sets, really. I just<br />
feel that if it is presented well, and you balance it<br />
out, if it’s honest it works. Dewey Redman<br />
would play all kinds of music in one night, and I<br />
want to do the same thing. You can play free,<br />
play a standard, play a Gershwin or an Ornette<br />
Coleman tune, you can mix it up.<br />
Nash: You don’t play down to an audience. But<br />
if you’re on a jazz cruise, for example, they<br />
don’t want to hear something adventurous, they<br />
are not the typical jazz fan who likes creative<br />
improvised music. The jazz party scene comes<br />
from a New Orleans style, and if you’re the least<br />
bit adventurous even playing bebop that audience<br />
might get a little annoyed. So in that<br />
instance it’s advisable to take into account who<br />
is in the audience.<br />
Wilson: You can play accessible music, but if<br />
it’s not personal to the audience, they’ll feel<br />
neglected. Then you are alienating them. It all<br />
depends on how you embrace those folks and<br />
feel that energy.<br />
DB: Lewis, how do you lead or control the band<br />
from the drum chair, as you mentioned<br />
Nash: You can’t really control music. You’re<br />
directing the band. You might initiate, and what<br />
happens after that is a group thing. You might<br />
want to nudge it one way.<br />
Wilson: Dewey used to say, “People sound<br />
their best playing with me.” If you can allow<br />
somebody to go some place and you’re not<br />
controlling it, that’s great. As a leader, if I try to<br />
put someone in an environment, I don’t have to<br />
say anything to them. They know how to play<br />
their instrument. You trust them. Dewey<br />
always said, “Find people you love to play with<br />
and pick the music.”<br />
DB: But is there a way to lead the band from the<br />
drumset<br />
28 DOWNBEAT November 2009
Watts: It’s a feeling. You think, “Is this the<br />
right time” “If there’s a vamp at the beginning<br />
of the tune, how long will the vamp be” And<br />
from the drums you’re shaping the vamp, you’re<br />
breaking it down, deciding how long to play on<br />
the vamp, and then you cue a little thing to stick<br />
the melody or whatever.<br />
Nash: If you’re not doing it the same way all<br />
the time, the other musicians are going to have<br />
to look to you. If you play a different feel than<br />
what you usually do, or if you play brushes<br />
instead of sticks, or if you play Latin rather than<br />
straight time—that tells them. And often the<br />
band will take the music places you never<br />
thought of.<br />
Wilson: A great band just seems to go. That<br />
trust factor is there when it’s all aural. Musicians<br />
get nervous when they have to look for things.<br />
It’s how you shape the music—they’ll know<br />
where to go.<br />
DB: What else prompted your goals as leaders<br />
Better money<br />
[loud, side-splitting laughter]<br />
Watts: There’s a rim shot!<br />
DB: Better playing situations<br />
[more laughter]<br />
DB: Compositional expression<br />
Nash: Well, that is a big one for me.<br />
Watts: Yeah, for me, too.<br />
DB: So, leader money isn’t better than sideman<br />
money<br />
Nash: Often it’s better or at least on par, but<br />
sometimes you have to take a loss as a bandleader<br />
to get your music out there.<br />
Wilson: And there is the satisfaction, too, in getting<br />
people to come out and having them leave<br />
satisfied.<br />
Watts: Fooled ’em again!<br />
Wilson: That is why Art Blakey did it. He loved<br />
it. He wanted to play. There is the satisfaction<br />
that you pulled it off, you did it.<br />
DB: Which drummer/leaders had the biggest<br />
impact on you<br />
Nash: At different stages, different guys influenced<br />
me. Max Roach was probably the most<br />
important because he was different, he was daring,<br />
he was playing in 3, 5, 7, 9 and 11, and he<br />
would do things without piano. He was putting<br />
the drums front and center and saying this instrument<br />
can be as expressive and make as much<br />
music as any other instrument.<br />
Wilson: There was a Jack DeJohnette record I<br />
really loved, Album Album. I still love all those<br />
ECM records and his New Directions records<br />
with John Abercrombie. That was a pivotal<br />
moment for me. Album Album was cool, just the<br />
way it was put together. I asked Jack once about<br />
the energy in his right hand, and he took his stick<br />
and just hit the floor tom. It was like a nature<br />
show: The birds flew and the elephants started<br />
charging. Then he sat down and played, and his<br />
energy was unbelievable.<br />
Watts: For me, just seeing somebody like Billy<br />
Cobham and his command of the band, and<br />
playing all this intricate stuff with power and<br />
writing all this music. There’s music on<br />
Crosswinds that people are trying to do right<br />
now. This is prior to my “jazz education,” but<br />
then each one of these guys has a lesson in their<br />
presentation. Like Art Blakey, he truly wasn’t a<br />
composer, but he put such a big stamp on the<br />
band just from swinging it that hard. He and<br />
Elvin [Jones], their interpretation of Afro-Cuban<br />
rhythms is so strong that it has influenced how<br />
Cubans and Africans play the drums.<br />
So Art in how he commanded the group;<br />
Elvin, his conception of the beat and how he<br />
could play very straight things but then also play<br />
very abstractly. The conviction of Elvin’s whole<br />
thing is so strong that the band trusts him. And<br />
Elvin’s demeanor was so cool. You’d see him on<br />
the gig and he would be so nice and direct and<br />
cool with you. You’d think, “Elvin really digs<br />
me.” Then he’d see just some dude and he’s like,<br />
“What’s up, man!” Elvin was nice to everybody!<br />
[laughs] So I should be nice, too. Then Max<br />
Roach controlling the band a whole ’nother way<br />
with a different focus. He had all these fine lines<br />
and different contexts for presenting music and<br />
framing the drums. And Tony Williams, up to<br />
the end he was really focusing on composition.<br />
DB: What did you ask the masters when you had<br />
the chance to hang with them<br />
30 DOWNBEAT November 2009
Nash: You thought, “Maybe I can steer him to<br />
talk about something,” but you didn’t start asking<br />
questions right away.<br />
Watts: But cats do that now, right Cats jump<br />
in there like it’s an interview or something. [in a<br />
helium voice] “So, Elvin, why did you ...” That<br />
just doesn’t feel right.<br />
Nash: You learn from those guys by being<br />
around them and observing them. Once I was on<br />
a tribute concert to Art Blakey with Elvin Jones.<br />
At the sound check, Elvin’s over there and I’m<br />
thinking, “I’m onstage with Elvin Jones!” Later,<br />
Elvin was talking about this shuffle we were<br />
playing that night, discussing the left hand backbeat.<br />
He said, “You don’t really have to lift your<br />
arm up too much, just a nice snap with the<br />
wrist.” I’m listening real intently. Then that<br />
night on the concert, Elvin’s elbow is way up<br />
above his ear!<br />
Watts: He set you up!<br />
Nash: Yeah. And he had a huge grin on his face!<br />
DB: How do you keep a working band together<br />
Nash: You want to work enough times throughout<br />
the year to make sure that the band has a<br />
consistent sound. If you’re going to be a bandleader<br />
you have to think about the sound you’re<br />
trying to project. You may have to use different<br />
players, but they should still be part of the group<br />
sound. It’s about your vision, but that doesn’t<br />
dictate everything they do.<br />
Wilson: You choose guys you love. Lewis and<br />
I tussle over Terrell Stafford. But you trust<br />
somebody else coming in and that they will be<br />
fine, too.<br />
DB: Lewis, you told me once that a musician<br />
could be a total head case but if he brings something<br />
special to the bandstand ...<br />
Nash: These guys know what I am talking<br />
about!<br />
Wilson: Sure!<br />
Nash: Everybody doesn’t have to be normal.<br />
You need a little craziness sometimes.<br />
Watts: A little flavor.<br />
Nash: A guy might not show up on a gig, but<br />
you’re happy when he does!<br />
Watts: Once Elvin was really late to a gig, but<br />
Coltrane waited and didn’t play anything. And<br />
after the set, he said, “That’s Elvin Jones. Now<br />
you understand why we waited.”<br />
DB: What is your recording philosophy when<br />
cutting sides as a leader<br />
Nash: I am so focused on the music, I leave the<br />
recording to the guys who are turning the knobs.<br />
There’s a group of engineers, historically, who<br />
have been attracted to recording this music, and<br />
they’re not making a lot of money, either.<br />
They’re like us. But we know them, and we<br />
know they do it partially for the love of the<br />
music. They’re a part of our vibe as well. I try to<br />
remember those engineers who really got my<br />
sound on someone else’s date: Jim Anderson,<br />
David Baker, James Farber, Catherine Geller.<br />
Watts: It’s like another bandmember.<br />
Wilson: Matt Balitsaris has produced and<br />
recorded my records on Palmetto at his studio in<br />
Pennsylvania. If you’re a painter or a plumber,<br />
you don’t deal with electricity. You trust them<br />
just like you trust musicians.<br />
DB: Who are the unsung drummer/leaders<br />
Nash/Wilson/Watts: Victor Lewis. Ralph<br />
Peterson Jr. Chico Hamilton had great bands,<br />
and he’s still playing. Joe Chambers. Louis<br />
Hayes. Al Foster. Jimmy Cobb and Ben Riley<br />
are still leading. Ed Blackwell was like a scientist<br />
when it came to music and the drums.<br />
Dannie Richmond is another one. And Roy<br />
Brooks.<br />
Wilson: I love Billy Hart’s Enchance. And<br />
Oshumare. That’s a bad record. And younger<br />
guys like John Hollenbeck writing all this crazy<br />
stuff. Tyshawn Sorey is taking chances.<br />
Watts: And Dafnis Prieto.<br />
DB: Do we need more drummer/leaders<br />
Nash: If they feel it, go for it. Things will happen<br />
naturally. Drummers are hearing a lot of different<br />
things now, so they will bring something<br />
else when they become bandleaders.<br />
Wilson: It doesn’t have to be either/or. Andrew<br />
Cyrille makes great records.<br />
All: Yeah.<br />
Watts: It’s going to be a whole ’nother thing.<br />
These young cats will beam some drums up! DB<br />
November 2009 DOWNBEAT 31
DRUM<br />
ART BLAKEY<br />
Bu’s Delights and Laments<br />
by John Litweiler // March 25, 1976<br />
On his records, everything Art Blakey plays seems larger than life,<br />
so that it’s a surprise to see him in a club, encaged by cymbals<br />
and drums. Close up, he is medium-sized in every way, but his<br />
face and his dramatic speech again magnify life, events. When he laughs,<br />
he throws his head back to join the gods in merriment. When irritated or<br />
angry, his head turns down, his eyes glare and he resembles a gargoyle.<br />
His face is lined as though he’d stood hatless in the rain every spring of his<br />
56 years; his voice is harsh, often expressing extremes of feeling.<br />
He is a Messenger; in time, his mission has become an organic part of<br />
him. His evangelism—verbally, as well as from behind his drum set—has<br />
been remarkable for its determination and persistence. He is in dead<br />
earnest when he tells you, “If I couldn’t play music I’d be around doing<br />
banks in—not robbing them, but trying to be a banker, to steal me some<br />
money like the rest of them. If Nixon and them could do it, I sure could.”<br />
For most of us, music, as Art often says, “washes away the dust of everyday<br />
life.” For Art Blakey music is life: Man and message are one, and he<br />
and his Messengers nightly present a pageant of the history of jazz, from<br />
early swing to avant garde.<br />
I met Art Blakey in an air-conditioned coffee shop on a steaming<br />
Chicago day. The conversation ranged over many topics, and the master<br />
drummer’s mood fluctuated between satisfaction with the condition of<br />
jazz and pessimism, or even disgust, at the social circumstances surrounding<br />
the music.<br />
Curiously, Blakey has influenced 1976 jazz to a degree completely out<br />
of proportion to his popularity: There’ve always been more glittery groups<br />
and tinselly tympanists. Among important Jazz Messengers over the years,<br />
only Kenny Dorham, Byas and McCoy Tyner made their reputations<br />
before joining Blakey. Fifteen other discoveries—from Clifford Brown<br />
down to Woody Shaw—proved major modern influences while members<br />
of Blakey’s bands. Even now, Blakey expresses confidence that if a lastminute<br />
need arises, the likes of Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter, or Tyner<br />
are ready to rejoin him.<br />
The band Blakey brought to Chicago included two new faces, tenorsoprano<br />
saxist David Schnitzler and bassist Yoshio “Chin” Suzuki. “Come<br />
out and hear these kids that’re playing,” Art said pointedly. “When they<br />
become stars people say, ‘Ooh!’—but it was there all the time.”<br />
Two long-familiar Blakey partners came, too: trumpeter Bill Hardman,<br />
he of the many-noted, clean, stubbornly melodic line; and pianist Walter<br />
Davis Jr., the current “musical director,” composer-arranger, bright bop<br />
soloist, the band’s glue. Onstage, from a happy rock beat behind a tenor<br />
solo, to a fast, intricate Davis piece, to interplay with the brilliantly intense<br />
trumpeter, Blakey powered the band.<br />
When asked if he was close to Kenny Clarke and Max Roach in the<br />
1940s when the modern drum style developed, Blakey responded, “I think<br />
the styles are similar because the times were the source. You hear it around,<br />
and first thing you know, you’re doing it. So naturally I do many things I<br />
heard them do—especially Max, because he was very close to me. A lot of<br />
things he could do made sense to me, the things they were playing, interpreting<br />
arrangements. Running into each other was a natural thing. There<br />
were just certain styles that would fit into this music, certain runs, certain<br />
drummers that the cats would pick: Shadow Wilson, Max Roach, Klook,<br />
myself, Philly Joe, Art Taylor—he loved Max, and you could hear it, too:<br />
Ike Day died early; Tiny Kahn was a hell of a drummer, and a hell of an<br />
arranger; and Alan Dawson never got the credit that’s due him.”<br />
The significance of Blakey’s development was not lost on the innovative<br />
drummers who followed him in the ’60s and ’70s: Anthony Williams,<br />
Ed Blackwell, Sunny Murray, Milford Graves and Philip Wilson took<br />
Blakey’s ideas to their logical philosophical extremes. They often achieve<br />
intensity not far removed from Blakey’s own internal constant fire. It’s<br />
typical of Art that he’s unconcerned with his influence on other drummers;<br />
when I brought up Williams and Pete LaRoca, Art only said, “I love those<br />
cats, ’cause they’re still growing—no telling where they’re going in 15, 20<br />
years, when something else is happening. I’d like to be here to hear it.<br />
“I’m doing a book about my whole life, and Doubleday is printing it.<br />
I’m just doing it a little bit at a time, as it comes to me and I sit down at the<br />
tape recorder. I’ve read a lot of books about jazz, and I felt that it’s about<br />
time a book should come from the people who are in the business, who<br />
know what’s going on and what progress has been made. Somebody had<br />
to do something because musicians are so wrapped up in what they’re<br />
doing we don’t like to get down and talk about it. I’ve seen and lived<br />
through quite a bit of it, and I’d like to put it down so people would know<br />
what happens.<br />
“I go back to when Louis Armstrong was a big thing because he could<br />
hit high C. I go back to Baby Dodds and Ray Bauduc at the drums, Red<br />
Nichols, all these people—I go back to when you listened on a crystal set:<br />
Fletcher Henderson and his guys, Earl Hines from the Grand Terrace here<br />
in Chicago. Those were Prohibition days, with Eliot Ness running around,<br />
and musicians figured into that. It’s still the same gangsters, only now the<br />
weapon is the pencil with the piece of paper.<br />
“When I came up, black bands—big 18- to 20-piece bands—used to<br />
play all the big hotels in New York, even in Pittsburgh, my home: Don<br />
Redman, Cab Calloway, Fletcher Henderson. And after they saw how the<br />
art form was progressing, the white musicians came into jazz. This is<br />
where the art began to break down all that racial prejudice; they fought a<br />
lot of battles, from Bix Beiderbecke and Benny Goodman to where it is<br />
today, and I appreciate that. At one time here in the Midwest, if you<br />
couldn’t play in a jug you couldn’t get a gig playing jazz. People used to<br />
come to hear the bands just to look at the saxophone, because it was a pretty<br />
thing to look at. All that happened, and people should know about it.<br />
One beautiful thing that helped bring me into this business was the way<br />
the artists and musicians look upon a human being as just being a human<br />
being. If you could play, that was it.<br />
“I’ve had bands since I was 15 years old. I was playing a piano with<br />
the best band in Pittsburgh—18 pieces—and the best gig, too. We sounded<br />
like Count Basie, Fletcher Henderson, we played Benny Goodman and<br />
Benny Carter things. I played with all of the big bands: Andy Kirk, Lucky<br />
Millinder, Jimmie Lunceford, Earl Hines—who was a fantastic man—<br />
Count Basie sometimes when Jo Jones was sick. I even filled in with<br />
Duke when Louis Bellson married Pearl Bailey. I used to listen to all their<br />
records, and I listened to them rehearse, so when they needed a drummer, I<br />
knew the book. I needed all that experience; that’s what helps me today.<br />
“When I was coming up, my thing was Chick Webb, a master. He and<br />
Sid Catlett were my favorites. I like Kaiser Marshall, too—he invented the<br />
hi-hat sock cymbal. Sid Catlett used dynamics more than anyone. I liked a<br />
lot of them. Baby Dodds has a big belt buckle with some diamonds in it,<br />
used to wear silk shirts, and when he’d be playing, his shirt would just<br />
shimmy right in time with the music. I love Sonny Greer, that’s the Dorian<br />
Gray of the drummers, boy, he’ll live forever and look just as young. Jo<br />
Jones played what was called the Western drums; and Klook and Chick<br />
Webb and those cats played the Eastern drums, on the top cymbal. Baby<br />
32 DOWNBEAT November 2009
Dodds used to play mostly on the snare drum.<br />
“Respect is the most important thing in the world<br />
today, because that’s the only thing that follows you<br />
to the grave. You never find an armored truck following<br />
a hearse. All artists in this country want<br />
respect for what they’re doing. In Europe, in other<br />
countries, it’s not what’s on your head, it’s what’s in<br />
your head; over here it’s how much money you got,<br />
and a lot of people have to get out of that groove.<br />
This is why so many great artists have left: We lost<br />
Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Don Byas, Bud<br />
Powell, Art Taylor’s very happy in Europe where<br />
he wants to be. I’ll tell you another great musician<br />
we lost, and that’s Slide Hampton. A hardcore jazz<br />
musician who couldn’t make it here. All we had to<br />
do was give those men the respect due them. The<br />
greatest one of all time, Louis Armstrong, died a<br />
pauper compared with some of these rock artists.”<br />
Art Blakey on Don Byas: “I had two tenor<br />
players. Jeeminy, he was here in the United States<br />
[in 1970] and he wasn’t working, and I couldn’t<br />
stand that, so I said, ‘Come on, work with me.’<br />
Fantastic artist, plus the young guys in the group<br />
took advantage of his experience. He’s the one who<br />
originated it, him and Dizzy and Max and Oscar<br />
Pettiford—that’s the first bebop group I ever heard.<br />
We played ballads because he’s the king of that. He<br />
couldn’t take no more of it. These guys were little<br />
guys—nothing—when he left the country; they<br />
were running around with records for him to autograph.<br />
Now, when he came back after 25 years,<br />
they’re big shots and presidents at record companies.<br />
He’d go around to get a record date—he knew<br />
them, or thought he did—all of a sudden it’s, ‘Well,<br />
Don, you know, Don.’ He still ain’t getting as much<br />
respect as when he left.<br />
“I understood him, too; he was tired. They came<br />
back at him like he was nothing. Over 60 years old,<br />
and he just went back to drinking a fifth of vodka a<br />
day. Some days he’d pay $100 a bottle, because he<br />
couldn’t get it in some countries. You can’t stand up under that. I talked to<br />
him about it. We sat in a park in Milano all afternoon. I gave him a lecture,<br />
and after I got through, he was kidding and said, ‘How can you tell me<br />
anything I’ve lived longer than you.’ I said, ‘You sure have, and you<br />
know more than I do.’ He said, ‘I sure do, so I’m doing it the way I want<br />
to do it.’ He just got disgusted.<br />
“Did you know when Don Byas worked with me—went to Japan and<br />
came to this country with me—he was making $500 a week, right When<br />
he went back home to Holland and he wasn’t working, the government<br />
paid him $500 a week. Do you mean to tell me a little country like that can<br />
subsidize their artists and this country can’t That’s jive. That’s why Don<br />
Byas became a Dutch citizen, carried a Dutch passport, spoke Dutch.”<br />
Art Blakey on recording: “We have that recording of Sonny Stitt and<br />
the Jazz Messengers coming. Columbia did more to make me known<br />
worldwide than any other record company.” When pressed for details on<br />
his remarkable association with the Blue Note label, Blakey said, “That<br />
was a personal relationship. With Alfred [Lion] and Frank [Wolff] and<br />
Thelonious and Ike Quebec—that was a good family thing. I like Alfred<br />
and Frank very much, and I’m sorry they retired and then passed. They<br />
treated the musicians very fair, more than any other record companies at<br />
that time. They would pay the musicians for rehearsing; they would<br />
always have food there, and on the date, boy, we’d have a big party. They<br />
tried to show their appreciation. They never turned down a musician when<br />
he’d ask them for money. Alfred might do anything—he was just that<br />
way. My thing was different. I recorded whenever I wanted to. When we<br />
weren’t working, if we were off two weeks, we’d go in the studio every<br />
day, stay all day, the cats got paid for it. I always kept my payroll on an<br />
even keel.<br />
“We’d play the songs out on the road, we’d come on in and just play<br />
them. If we didn’t like them, we’d change them around, rehearse, play<br />
them again. He was like that—he didn’t rush around telling you about the<br />
costs of the studio—take your time, make good records. Ike Quebec was<br />
responsible for Alfred and them. They listened to what he said, because Ike<br />
knew the business. They’d question Ike before they’d record someone.<br />
They’d go around every night and listen to all the cats—every night.<br />
They’d catch a plane, come out to Chicago, and listen to some musicians—<br />
that’s how they got John Gilmore and Clifford Jordan [see the Blowin’<br />
Sessions twofer on Blue Note]. Johnny Griffin was a topnotch tenor player<br />
who had his own way of doing things, and he just would never come out of<br />
Chicago. He was working with me, so they got him to do those dates—<br />
they’d heard him before. I was lucky to get him in my band.”<br />
Finally, Art Blakey on Art Blakey: “I’m not a person of routine.<br />
That’s why I’m playing music. I don’t like getting up in the morning,<br />
going to work, coming home, all that’s not life to me. When I visit the cats<br />
I was raised with—baldheaded, toothless, walking around on canes—I<br />
look at them and say, ‘I’ll see you.’ I don’t want to be around that shit. If<br />
you travel and change, that really keeps you on your toes, keeps you<br />
youthful and thinking. I got to travel, got to see my friends, I got people<br />
here I love and people over there I love. I can’t sit down and stay in one<br />
town, I got to see them all. The whole world is like my family.” DB<br />
HENRY J. KAHANEK<br />
November 2009 DOWNBEAT 33
Toolshed<br />
DRUM<br />
Euphonix MC Mix and MC Control: Desktop Integration<br />
Euphonix has broken new ground with the<br />
introduction of MC Mix and MC Control, two<br />
sleekly designed Artist Series units that offer<br />
unparalleled control of your audio or video<br />
software right from the desktop.<br />
Euphonix has entered the expanding world<br />
of desktop audio by putting the power of its<br />
EuCon technology into affordable, small-footprint<br />
DAW control units. Introduced in 2004,<br />
EuCon protocol allows hardware controllers<br />
to communicate directly with software applications<br />
over high-speed Ethernet. The first<br />
workstation controller to utilize the technology<br />
was the company’s MC Pro, targeted at the<br />
professional audio, video and film industries.<br />
Both the MC Mix and MC Control are<br />
designed with the desktop studio in mind, fitting<br />
perfectly in between your monitor and<br />
keyboard. “We looked at the ergonomics and<br />
setup of most DAW systems and developed a<br />
form factor that is easy to integrate with traditional<br />
analog consoles that have no DAW control,”<br />
said Derk Hagdron, director of worldwide<br />
channel marketing for Euphonix. “The<br />
MC Mix and Control provide incredible control<br />
over your workstation software and are<br />
incredibly effective on their own. However, all<br />
the Artists Series products are modular and<br />
can be linked together to create a custom console<br />
to suit your particular workflow needs.”<br />
The MC Mix is designed with mixing in<br />
mind and provides eight bankable motorized<br />
fader strips with LCD display, channel control<br />
knobs, navigational controls and other<br />
options in a sleek package no bigger than an<br />
extended keyboard. The MC Control offers<br />
total control over your application and has<br />
four bankable fader strips, a host of programmable<br />
buttons, a full-color touch screen and<br />
dedicated transport controls with a jog wheel.<br />
I was ready to roll with both products after<br />
performing a quick software install and connecting<br />
the units with a standard Ethernet<br />
cable to my MacPro. (Currently, the MC Mix<br />
and MC Control are only compatible with<br />
Macintosh operating systems.) The EuControl<br />
software loaded on startup, and after launching<br />
Logic Pro 8, both units immediately configured<br />
themselves to my project with no<br />
additional setup needed. I could actually<br />
switch one unit off and the other would intelligently<br />
re-align itself to reflect the new hardware<br />
configuration.<br />
Euphonix got it right with EuControl, building<br />
the intelligence into the software and not<br />
the hardware. “EuCon is the star of the<br />
show,” Hagdron said. “Without it we would<br />
have to use MIDI protocols that are outdated<br />
and fairly superficial.” By providing access to<br />
things that are not even reachable with the<br />
mouse, EuCon protocol allows for a level of<br />
integration with software applications that has<br />
never been possible before. Another important<br />
advantage of EuCon is the incredibly high<br />
resolution of the MC Mix and MC Control’s<br />
faders and knobs, which allow for extremely<br />
smooth and precise mixing and parameter<br />
adjustments.<br />
The MC Mix and MC Control are state-ofthe-art,<br />
professional-level products with a<br />
mind-boggling set of capabilities. Whether<br />
used individually or as part of a modular system,<br />
they offer accuracy, control and customization<br />
to your digital audio workflow and<br />
are nothing short of amazing.<br />
—Keith Baumann<br />
»<br />
Ordering info: euphonix.com<br />
Steinberg Cubase 5: Upper-Echelon DAW<br />
One of the most popular DAW applications in<br />
the world is Steinberg’s Cubase. It has long<br />
led the way in features and usability and has<br />
been cross-platform since 1992. Cubase was<br />
completely rewritten in 2002 as “Cubase SX”<br />
to improve stability and allow for easier<br />
updates, and since then, the major updates<br />
have been impressive—so how does version<br />
5 improve upon an already very mature platform,<br />
and is it worth the upgrade price<br />
There are some nice improvements under<br />
the hood in version 5. It can now natively support<br />
Windows Vista 64, which allows you to<br />
use huge amounts of RAM. While it does not<br />
yet support 64-bit operation on OS X yet, they<br />
have “cocoa-ized” this version, which will<br />
enable this to happen in a coming update as<br />
well as keep it running natively in future versions<br />
of the Mac OS. A new “Channel Batch<br />
Export” option allows you to export many<br />
tracks at once into separate audio files—anyone<br />
who has had to export for another DAW<br />
system knows how important this is.<br />
Cubase 5 introduces a new concept called<br />
“VST Expression,” which allows you to control<br />
multiple articulations of a sound source<br />
from a single MIDI track, sidestepping any<br />
issues with keyswitches. This makes using<br />
any of the large orchestral libraries a breeze,<br />
and can also be used to create incredibly<br />
interesting synthesizer tracks. They have also<br />
included a pitch manipulation system called<br />
“VariAudio” that can be used for standard<br />
vocal corrections, but is robust enough for<br />
more interesting applications. While it may<br />
not be as intricate as the Celemony or Antares<br />
options, it is included in the DAW workflow,<br />
which makes it much easier to use.<br />
Steinberg also added in a great set of tools<br />
34 DOWNBEAT November 2009
Sonare TRB-500/600, B&S eXquisite Trumpets: Responsive Horns<br />
With renowned designer Cliff Blackburn’s<br />
patented lead pipe design on all Sonaré professional<br />
trumpets since 2004, the brass and<br />
wind manufacturer began getting requests for<br />
a student horn that had some of the same<br />
components. The result is Sonaré’s TRB-<br />
500 and TRB-600 intermediate trumpets,<br />
featuring Blackburn-designed<br />
signature lead pipes and the MicroLok<br />
valve system.<br />
The MicroLok system sets the<br />
valve piston into alignment during<br />
the production process, then tightens<br />
it into place by a set screw. The<br />
alignment is permanent, but<br />
can be reset by a trained technician,<br />
without soldering.<br />
Cleaning and oiling will not<br />
disturb the setting. The difference<br />
is clearly noticeable: The<br />
horn slots beautifully, and<br />
even when you first play it, there’s a<br />
fluidity, a smooth feeling of air<br />
moving through the horn that gives<br />
a singing feeling. With the TRB-500<br />
model, I sometimes forgot I was<br />
playing on an intermediate horn.<br />
While I expected the horn to<br />
play well in a concert band setting,<br />
I was pleasantly surprised<br />
when I popped a lead mouthpiece<br />
into the TRB-500 for a big band<br />
gig. It generated a brilliant lead<br />
sound. For a student horn to offer this<br />
kind of versatility allows easy participation<br />
in various aspects of the school’s music<br />
program (concert band, orchestra or jazz<br />
ensemble), making it an excellent<br />
choice for a student musician. The<br />
TRB-500 and TRB-600 cost $899 and<br />
$999, respectively.<br />
TRB-500<br />
eXquisite<br />
The new handcrafted eXquisite B♭ trumpet is<br />
a product of the cooperation between<br />
German instrument manufacturer B&S and<br />
prolific L.A. studio recording artist Malcolm<br />
McNab, whose motion picture soundtrack<br />
credits number more than 1,500. The trumpet<br />
(also available in the key of C) features a handhammered<br />
one-piece yellow brass bell with<br />
French bead flat rim nickel silver outer slides<br />
and a 11.3 mm bore.<br />
Well balanced and lightweight, I expected a<br />
bright and brilliant sound from the eXquisite.<br />
Instead, the horn produced a surprisingly dark<br />
tone reminiscent of a much heavier trumpet.<br />
It seemed counterintuitive: I’ve come to<br />
expect that aspects of flexibility and<br />
agility are naturally sacrificed when<br />
seeking a darker-sounding horn. But<br />
B&S has dispelled this myth by creating<br />
an instrument that handles like a jazz- or<br />
pop-oriented horn while producing a<br />
more traditional orchestral sound.<br />
To counteract the medium bore of the<br />
eXquisite, I found myself wishing for a bigger<br />
mouthpiece, in an effort to emulate the<br />
more free-blowing horn to which I’ve<br />
become accustomed. The trumpet slots<br />
well, and intonation is very good in all registers.<br />
Overall, it sounds and blows like a<br />
heavier trumpet, but allows the freedom of<br />
movement like a lighter horn.<br />
The remarkable agility of the eXquisite<br />
B♭ is highlighted on McNab’s web site,<br />
where you can hear him play an excerpt<br />
of a transcription of a Tchaikovsky violin<br />
concerto arranged for trumpet. He starts<br />
from a low concert A and soars to the E-<br />
flat above the staff, and all the while<br />
the horn never loses its dark, centered<br />
quality and timbre.<br />
—Mike Pavlik<br />
» Ordering info: sonarewinds.com<br />
» Ordering info: b-and-s.com<br />
for groove and beat creation and manipulation.<br />
A new drum sampler called Groove<br />
Agent One is included with a few kits to start<br />
you off, but it can import Akai MPC files and<br />
sliced loops, as well as drag-and-drop functionality<br />
with WAVs and AIFFs from your hard<br />
drive. It has a clean and simple interface and<br />
has dedicated controls<br />
for all the<br />
parameters you<br />
would expect on<br />
each pad. Beat<br />
Designer is a sophistcated<br />
step<br />
sequencer with<br />
multiple patten<br />
slots. It makes it<br />
intuitive to humanize<br />
your grooves, and then drag the MIDI file<br />
directly to a track—it makes drum programming<br />
go much faster and easier. Lastly, there<br />
is LoopMash, which will randomly resequence<br />
any number of loops that you drag<br />
into it on the fly with various options for parameter<br />
shifts.<br />
Added to these major enhancements are a<br />
long list of smaller ones, including full support<br />
for the VST3 spec, a nice convolution<br />
reverb plug called Reverence, a redesigned<br />
and optimized automation system, and an<br />
onscreen virtual keyboard. All of this adds up<br />
to a really great upgrade. There’s something<br />
here for everyone, but Steinberg was still<br />
able to maintain the program’s ease of use<br />
despite the plethora of new features. Version<br />
5 is a worthy child of the venerable Cubase<br />
family, and should keep it in the top echelons<br />
of music production software for the forseeable<br />
future. I highly recommend it as an<br />
upgrade, and as a great DAW for new purchasers.<br />
—Chris Neville<br />
»<br />
Ordering info: steinberg.net<br />
November 2009 DOWNBEAT 35
Toolshed<br />
DRUM<br />
2<br />
GEAR BOX 3<br />
1 Blissful Tone<br />
Bliss vintage-style cymbals<br />
are the flagship line from<br />
Dream. Offered in even sizes,<br />
they are hand-hammered,<br />
microlathed plates with a low<br />
bridge and small but clear<br />
bells. Quite thin by modern<br />
standards, Bliss cymbals are<br />
exceptionally resilient and<br />
slightly soft on the stick. The<br />
undertones are warm and<br />
rich but never overpower the<br />
stick sound. Separation<br />
between stick sound and<br />
overtones is clear, and the<br />
pitch range is low and dark.<br />
More info: dreamcymbals.com<br />
2 New World View<br />
PowersPercussion.com has<br />
released Ritimista: Volume<br />
One, the first in a new playalong<br />
series for world percussion.<br />
The CD consists of 11<br />
rhythms found in a variety of<br />
African and Latin music<br />
styles—each is looped for<br />
about three minutes and is<br />
presented at two different<br />
tempos. Pianists, guitarists<br />
and non-percussionists can<br />
benefit from Ritimista as well<br />
by practicing montunos,<br />
comping, melodies and soloing<br />
over each track. A link to<br />
complete written notation is<br />
provided, allowing players to<br />
learn the drum, bell and clave<br />
rhythms contained on the disc.<br />
More info: powerspercussion.com<br />
3 Going Mental<br />
Alfred Publishing has added<br />
Drum Philosophy, with Paul<br />
Wertico, to its Artist Series of<br />
instructional DVDs. Wertico<br />
provides valuable insights into<br />
the philosphy he employs at<br />
the drum kit, an approach that<br />
is as much mental as it is<br />
physical. Topics include stick<br />
technique, soloing, ghost<br />
notes, practicing, listening and<br />
interacting. Also featured are<br />
in-studio ensemble performances<br />
of original songs,<br />
followed by in-depth<br />
discussion and analysis.<br />
More info: alfred.com<br />
2<br />
1<br />
3<br />
4<br />
4 Signature Mallet<br />
Vic Firth has introduced the<br />
Ed Saindon Signature<br />
Keyboard Mallet, a medium<br />
cord mallet with rattan shafts<br />
designed to create a full<br />
sound with lots of color and<br />
exceptional clarity at all<br />
dynamic levels. You hear the<br />
low fundamental of the note<br />
as well as the definite attack,<br />
which aids in the clarity. With<br />
a weighted core and tightly<br />
wrapped cord, the mallet is<br />
versatile on vibraphone and<br />
marimba. It is suitable for<br />
jazz, classical, marching band<br />
and solo playing. MSRP: $72.<br />
More info: vicfirth.com<br />
5 Practice Surface<br />
Ludwig’s new Pat Petrillo LP4<br />
Practice Pad is designed to<br />
strengthen and reinforce hand and<br />
wrist motion for all drummers.<br />
Offering three different playing levels<br />
and four different playing surfaces,<br />
the pad fits neatly on top of<br />
your snare drum, table top or lap.<br />
The LP4 can also be attached<br />
directly into the snare stand basket<br />
or on top of a cymbal stand. Each<br />
pad surface has a unique sound<br />
and feel, corresponding to the playing<br />
characteristics of different<br />
drums and cymbals.<br />
More info: ludwig-drums.com<br />
5<br />
36 DOWNBEAT November 2009
Woodshed<br />
DRUM<br />
MASTER CLASS<br />
by Mat Marucci<br />
Heel-Raise Bass Drum Pedal Technique<br />
Good drummers know that when striking a<br />
drum with a stick, it is important to get the stick<br />
back off the drumhead as quickly as possible.<br />
There are exceptions to this rule, but it is the<br />
technically correct way to play, as it affords the<br />
drummer maximum tone and speed of motion.<br />
If the drumstick lays on the drumhead after a<br />
stroke, then it needs to move in two directions<br />
before it can hit the drum again: upward first,<br />
then back downward to the drumhead.<br />
When playing the bass drum, it is equally<br />
important to get the beater back off the drumhead.<br />
However, many drummers leave the beater<br />
on the drumhead after it strikes the drum,<br />
which is known as burying the beater. This technique<br />
can be used to get a more deadened or<br />
muffled sound from the bass drum, but if tone<br />
and speed are desired, leaving the beater buried<br />
into the drumhead is counter-productive.<br />
Most drummers play the bass drum using<br />
either the heel-down or heel-up technique.<br />
Some stay with one or the other, while some<br />
will use both techniques at various times.<br />
Usually the heel-down technique is used by<br />
drummers playing more jazz-oriented music,<br />
while the heel-up technique is used by those<br />
playing heavier styles such as r&b, rock,<br />
blues, funk, or whatever is the current pop<br />
style of the day.<br />
Another difference in the two techniques is<br />
that most heel-down users will play from the<br />
ankle with the heel stationary on the drum pedal<br />
and the beater motion executed by the ball of the<br />
foot pushing down on the pedal. Most heel-up<br />
players will use the force of the leg stomping<br />
down on the pedal to facilitate the beater hitting<br />
the drumhead. There is a tremendous difference<br />
in the amount of mass that needs to be moved<br />
with each of these techniques. What’s faster to<br />
move An ankle or a whole leg And which<br />
takes more effort It is obvious that the heeldown<br />
technique will be faster, using less energy.<br />
It is also obvious that the heel-up technique will<br />
give more power but will tend toward the beater<br />
staying in the drumhead after the stroke.<br />
The “heel-raise technique” can be used for<br />
both speed and power when needed. It allows<br />
the player to bury the beater if desired or let<br />
the beater come off the drumhead with as<br />
much power.<br />
To begin, put your foot on the bass pedal as<br />
normal when using the heel-down method [see<br />
Fig. 1]. Next, lift your heel very quickly as high<br />
as you can. This will force the ball of your foot<br />
downward on the pedal footboard, making the<br />
beater hit the drumhead. Immediately after the<br />
beater hits the drum, while keeping the ball of<br />
your foot on the pedal, allow the beater to come<br />
back to its starting position. The ending position<br />
will be with the heel in the air [Fig. 2]. Keep in<br />
mind that the ball of your foot will always have<br />
full contact with the footboard and remain on<br />
the pedal. Lifting any part of the foot off the<br />
pedal will inhibit control of the beater strokes.<br />
Put the heel back down and do the technique<br />
again, always ending with the heel in the up<br />
position and allowing the beater to rebound off<br />
the head. After doing it a few times you will<br />
find that you can control where the beater stops<br />
with the pressure of the ball of your foot. You<br />
will also find that the harder and quicker you<br />
move the heel upward, the stronger the stroke<br />
will be and the more volume you will attain. It is<br />
very important that the beater rebounds off the<br />
drumhead and comes back to the starting position<br />
with your foot maintaining contact with the<br />
pedal at all times.<br />
The next step is to do the same technique but<br />
only raising your heel half the distance [Fig. 3].<br />
You won’t develop as much power, but that<br />
isn’t the point. Just have the beater come off the<br />
drum while controlling and stopping it with the<br />
pressure of the ball of your foot on the pedal.<br />
When you can make the beater come to a<br />
complete stop with your heel in the halfway<br />
position, then move your heel upward from the<br />
halfway position to the original up position as in<br />
Figure 2. This should cause the beater to strike<br />
the drumhead again, getting a note with each<br />
motion: one note when moving to the halfway<br />
point and another note when moving from the<br />
halfway point to the full up position. When<br />
practicing this, be sure to have the beater come<br />
38 DOWNBEAT November 2009
to a complete stop at both heel positions. Then<br />
gradually shorten the amount of time between<br />
the two notes, stopping the beater for shorter and<br />
shorter periods.<br />
Eventually it will become one smooth<br />
motion with the heel moving from the down<br />
position through the halfway mark to the up<br />
position, getting two notes in a row: one when<br />
the heel is at the halfway point and another<br />
when it is at the up position. Move the heel<br />
faster, and you will get a double-stroke sound<br />
with one heel motion. This is very similar to<br />
playing double strokes with a stick to get two<br />
notes with one motion.<br />
The next step is to apply the same technique<br />
stopping the heel one-third of the way and getting<br />
a note. Then move to the halfway point, getting<br />
the second note and to the full up position<br />
for the third note. Again, smooth out the motion<br />
and you will play a triplet by moving the heel<br />
upward in one motion.<br />
Finally, do the same thing with quadruplets.<br />
Stop the heel one-fourth of the way to get the<br />
first note, eventually moving the heel upward in<br />
four motions to get four notes using one smooth<br />
motion, and you can play 16th notes.<br />
Being able to play doubles, triplets and<br />
16ths with speed and power is enough in itself,<br />
but there is another facet that can be added to<br />
this technique. This is getting a stroke by bringing<br />
the heel downward from the up position. It<br />
is fairly easy. Simply put your heel in the up<br />
position and quickly bring it downward to the<br />
heel-down position. The beater will strike the<br />
drumhead and rebound back, with you controlling<br />
that rebound again with pressure from the<br />
ball of your foot on the pedal. By doing this<br />
you can get a stroke on the drum while putting<br />
your heel in the down position preparing to<br />
move upward.<br />
For example, to play triplets, you would start<br />
with the heel down and move it upward two<br />
times, getting two notes: one at the halfway<br />
point and another when the heel is fully up.<br />
Then you bring the heel back down, allowing<br />
the beater to strike and rebound off the drumhead.<br />
This completes a triplet. To play triplets<br />
continuously, the heel motion would be up-updown,<br />
up-up-down, etc. To play 16th notes continuously,<br />
the heel motion would be up-up-updown,<br />
etc. By ending in the heel-down position,<br />
you are prepared for the next note or notes—single,<br />
doubles, triples, whatever your intention.<br />
This heel-raise technique is very adaptable<br />
for double bass drums. For example, when getting<br />
two notes with each foot, a double stroke<br />
roll can be achieved. The technique can also<br />
be applied when playing paradiddles with double<br />
bass.<br />
The heel-raise technique is not intended to be<br />
your main technique, but an optional technique<br />
to be added to the drummer’s arsenal. It works<br />
extremely well when any type of multiple stroke<br />
is desired from the bass drum and is definitely<br />
preferable to using the more common heel-up,<br />
leg-stomping technique.<br />
DB<br />
Example 1<br />
Example 2<br />
Example 3<br />
Mat Marucci is a drummer and educator who has<br />
performed with Jimmy Smith, Kenny Burrell,<br />
James Moody, Eddie Harris, Buddy De Franco,<br />
Les McCann and Pharoah Sanders. He has written<br />
several books on drumming for Lewis Music<br />
and Mel Bay Publications and has been an adjunct<br />
faculty member for American River College<br />
(Sacramento, Calif.) and The Jazzschool (Berkeley,<br />
Calif.). Visit him online at matmarucci.com.<br />
November 2009 DOWNBEAT 39
EUGENE GOLOGURSKY PHOTOGRAPHY
Les Paul<br />
By Frank-John Hadley<br />
IN PRAISE OF A MASTER<br />
American music lost a living icon on Aug.<br />
13 with the death of Les Paul—guitarist,<br />
inventor, songwriter, entertainer and<br />
raconteur.<br />
Days before his burial in Waukesha, Wis.,<br />
about 50 of Paul’s closest friends attended his<br />
wake at a New York City funeral home. Paul’s<br />
trio—guitarist Lou Pallo, bassist Nicki Parrott<br />
and pianist John Colianni—played his 1951 pop<br />
hit “How High The Moon” and three more<br />
songs in homage. Afterwards, a gathering of<br />
guitarists, musicians and industry VIPs convened<br />
for a solemn reception in the Gibson<br />
Guitar Showroom. Among those paying their<br />
respects were Tony Bennett, Bucky Pizzarelli,<br />
Pat Martino, Al DiMeola, Frank Vignola, Jose<br />
Feliciano, Joe Satriani, Slash and Paul’s godson,<br />
Steve Miller.<br />
One of the mourners, Ron Sturm, owner of<br />
the Iridium jazz club, where 94-year-old Paul<br />
enjoyed a popular Monday-night residency for<br />
the past 12 years, found the bright edge around<br />
the dark clouds. “We’re lucky to have known<br />
Les,” he said, not long after the services. “The<br />
world was lucky to know him. Every time a guitarist<br />
picks up his guitar and plays a note, there is<br />
going to be some Les Paul in that forever. He<br />
lives forever.”<br />
It’s hard to overestimate the impact that Paul<br />
made on our musical culture. “He is one of<br />
those rare figures, maybe the only one,<br />
whose fingerprints can be found in nearly every<br />
aspect of the way that music has been played,<br />
produced and listened to over the past half-century<br />
of recorded sound,” said guitarist Pat<br />
Metheny, during a break from a recent recording<br />
session. “His contribution to the guitar itself literally<br />
changed everything, and his playing was<br />
influential not only for the great ideas and notes<br />
but in the way that he brought a high level of<br />
musicianship to a mass audience.”<br />
Anthony Wilson, on the road with Diana<br />
Krall, echoed Metheny: “Make no mistake, our<br />
world, especially for musicians and lovers of<br />
music, would be entirely different if this man<br />
had not chosen the path that he did.”<br />
Texan Eric Johnson remarked that “Les<br />
didn’t only open doors, he completely created<br />
new frontiers.”<br />
It’s widely known that Paul made one of the<br />
first solid-body electric guitars. His prototype,<br />
known as “the log,” didn’t impress the Gibson<br />
guitar company in the early 1940s, but in 1952<br />
Gibson debuted its Les Paul model, partly<br />
designed by Paul. Since then, of course, millions<br />
of guitars emblazoned with his name have been<br />
sold. Just as important to the course of popular<br />
music were Paul’s inventions of multitrack<br />
recording, overdubbing and, among other electronic<br />
creations, phase-shifting.<br />
Jazz-savvy bluesman Joe Louis Walker said<br />
he admired how Paul tied his genius to a fierce<br />
individualism. “He’s what musicians aspire to<br />
be, to be able to call your shots, live on our own<br />
terms. Les was from that class. He’s like a<br />
visionary. I don’t mean to sound esoteric, but<br />
he’s really deep.”<br />
Walker knew that Paul triumphed over all<br />
sorts of misfortune: an electrical shock in the<br />
early ’40s that traumatized his nervous system;<br />
an icy 1948 car crash that badly fractured his<br />
arm (doctors set it permanently at an angle,<br />
allowing him to keep playing); life-threatening<br />
pneumonia, also in 1948; a long, hard fall from<br />
popularity; a messy divorce aired in public; a<br />
broken eardrum in the mid-’60s; quintuplebypass<br />
heart surgery at the start of the ’80s;<br />
arthritis that started up in the ’60s and by the end<br />
of his life had crippled all but two fingers and a<br />
thumb, forcing him to learn the guitar all over<br />
again. “Perseverance, perseverance, perseverance.”<br />
Walker intoned the words like a mantra.<br />
“If anybody’s ever got through it, it’s Les Paul.”<br />
Derek Trucks, who favors Les Paul guitars,<br />
said, “The thing that struck me the most when I<br />
found out Les had passed was, that’s how you’re<br />
supposed to live a life. He did it right. He had a<br />
house gig, he was still connected and he was still<br />
doing what he loved. I hope that at 70, at 80,<br />
God hope at 90, I can still be doing that. The last<br />
time I saw Les was at his 90th birthday show, at<br />
Carnegie Hall, and he was still wide-open, playing,<br />
humorous, sharp as a tack. He was just fearless.”<br />
For Paul, it was an affair of mind and heart.<br />
“I fell madly in love with the guitar,” he told<br />
writer Jim Macnie in a 1997 DownBeat cover<br />
story with Pat Martino. “When I got married, the<br />
first thing I told my wife was that I loved two<br />
things: her and the instrument. I have a way of<br />
communicating to people that I can’t find in the<br />
English language, but it’s in my guitar. You<br />
can’t go down and buy rhythm, can’t go and buy<br />
a sense of humor and you sure as hell can’t buy<br />
perfect pitch at Sam Ash. But what you can do is<br />
play that guitar and express yourself.” And he<br />
stuck to a personal creed: “What [I’ve] got to do<br />
is make the people happy.”<br />
Lester Polsfuss, a grandson of German<br />
immigrants, began his happy communicating<br />
(for pay, anyway) in 1928 at age<br />
13. Playing hillbilly music, he assumed the<br />
name Rhubarb Red (a reference to his hair color)<br />
and found a receptive audience on the radio in<br />
Missouri. Traces of country music would always<br />
have a place in his style. Switching over to jazz<br />
and pop full-time, calling himself Les Paul from<br />
the mid-’30s on, he worked with his own trio,<br />
with Fred Waring’s Pennsylvanians, with Bing<br />
Crosby, the Andrews Sisters, Art Tatum, Earl<br />
Hines, Nat Cole and Norman Granz’s Jazz at the<br />
Philharmonic gang. Paul teamed up with singerguitarist<br />
Mary Ford (his second wife) as one of<br />
the most successful acts of the pre-rock ’n’ roll<br />
’50s. They had almost 40 hits, topped 10 million<br />
record sales and hosted a nationally broadcast<br />
television show.<br />
All the while, Paul paid special attention to<br />
a certain guitarist in Europe. “Django<br />
Reinhardt was his big guy,” said Bucky<br />
Pizzarelli, his longtime pal. “Les said Django<br />
was the best in the world—and he was right.”<br />
Paul in fact tracked down the elusive Gypsy in<br />
Paris, and they met another time in New York.<br />
Curiously, he did not identify Reinhardt in an<br />
early ’50s DownBeat Blindfold Test, awarding<br />
the song performance two stars. Paul later<br />
made amends, in a fashion, by paying for<br />
Reinhardt’s gravestone.<br />
In more recent years, Paul played to clubgoers,<br />
first at Fat Tuesday’s (1983-1995) then<br />
the Iridium, both in Manhattan, and not too long<br />
of a haul from his 29-room home in Mahwah,<br />
N.J. Lou Pallo was there for him the whole time,<br />
supplying rhythm guitar. (They had initially<br />
November 2009 DOWNBEAT 41
worked together at a Jersey club called Molly’s, where Paul launched his<br />
“comeback.”) Pallo revealed that Paul was afraid of something: “He<br />
always wanted to be remembered as a guitar player, not just a guitar,” he<br />
said.<br />
In perpetuity, Paul has nothing to fear. There’s no shortage of admiring<br />
guitarists keen on talking up his guitar artistry. Larry Coryell, using a slow<br />
cadence and placing careful thought behind each word, offered: “Les had<br />
it. He had it. The man knew how to make the guitar talk.” Adrian Belew<br />
remarked that “Les could play so well, play so very fast, do all sorts of<br />
amazing runs and tricks that other people are still doing today.” Pat<br />
Bergeson, part of Madeleine Peyroux’s touring band, judged Paul to be<br />
“one of the most creative guitar players ever.” Greg Nagy, of the Michigan<br />
roots band Root Doctor, might have spoken for three generations of<br />
famous and unheralded guitarists when he commented that “anybody who<br />
has ever played a trill, pull-off, hammer-on, slur, or any other plethora of<br />
techniques owes a debt of gratitude to Les Paul.”<br />
Bucky Pizzarelli first heard Paul play on a Chicago radio station<br />
decades ago. “It was spectacular,” he said. “Les knew how to play the<br />
melody. His jazz playing has always had the melody in it. That’s a trick<br />
that all the greats had, starting with Louis Armstrong. He syncopated the<br />
melody and then whenever he wanted to throw one of those beautiful runs<br />
in, he threw it in.” Pizzarelli said he treasured the many times he worked<br />
with Paul, whether it was at Carnegie Hall or in a small backwoods lounge<br />
in New Jersey. “Les had a fine mind for anything that had to do with<br />
music. He’d present it better than anybody else. That’s the only way I can<br />
explain it.”<br />
New Yorker Frank Vignola had many occasions, onstage and off, to<br />
check out Paul’s fine mind. “Les was a master at playing a melody and<br />
getting an unbelievably great sound,” he said. “I remember my first night<br />
playing with him. We were doing ‘I’m Confessin’.’ He played the first 16<br />
bars and when it came to the bridge he looked over to me to play the<br />
melody. It was then I realized how thin my sound was. His tone was thick<br />
and big.”<br />
Paul’s lyricism was very familiar to Pallo. “He would play ‘Over The<br />
Rainbow,’ and it was so pretty,” he said. “He got the exact notes and timbre.<br />
It was so perfect.”<br />
Another New Yorker, Joel Harrison, heard Paul far less often than<br />
Pallo but was just as mesmerized. “The sound of his playing has a warmth<br />
and a very direct kind of ... how am I going to say this ... the notes just<br />
ping out at you,” he said. “They’re very clear. They’re very true.”<br />
Charlie Baty, now involved with Gypsy jazz after years swinging the<br />
blues with the Nightcats, said what he liked most about Paul on records<br />
was “the fact that his playing is exciting and that his sense of structure is<br />
different than a lot of people.” He continued: “When I hear Les, I’m thinking<br />
that he’s realizing the potential of the guitar. He’s using open strings.<br />
He’s using pull-offs and doing the things you can only do on the guitar so<br />
he’s not playing the same kind of line that a horn player would play.”<br />
Bucky Pizzarelli’s son, John, who grew up in New Jersey with Paul a<br />
neighbor, reported he was amazed by all facets of his playing, but was puzzled<br />
by something he hoped his chatty friend would clarify for him. “I’ve<br />
always thought that Les’ guitar had a whole different sound than what the<br />
sound has become on the Les Paul guitars,” he said. “But for Les, that was<br />
the sound the way it was supposed to be, like a hollow-body archtop guitar<br />
without the feedback so he could turn it up loud. So I asked him, ‘How<br />
come those pickups on your guitar are a lot different from the ones on the<br />
Les Paul guitars they sell’ He only said, ‘Oh, I got them at Radio Shack.’”<br />
Duke Robillard said that he loved Paul and Ford’s “New Sound” of the<br />
’50s—the direct result of Paul the perfectionist fiddling around countless<br />
hours with the electronic gear in the garage workshop of his home, then in<br />
Los Angeles: “Man, the way he used augmented chords and whole-tone<br />
scales and diminished scales and then multi-tracked them.”<br />
Vignola was similarly taken. “The amazing thing about those records<br />
was that it was all one-takes because it was sound on sound, so if he made<br />
a mistake in one of his overdubs he had to start all over from the beginning,”<br />
he said. “There was such a high level of musicianship.”<br />
Coryell, who is older than baby-boomers Robillard and Vignola, heard<br />
“Mockin’ Bird Hill” and other Paul-Ford tunes when they were hot property.<br />
“Like everybody else in my age group, there was no way to avoid<br />
Les Paul unless you were nowhere near a radio or record player in the<br />
’50s,” he said. “He was part of our normal life, and when I got old enough<br />
to get interested in the guitar, my jazz guitar teacher said he had a record<br />
of Les playing before he started doing his multi-tracking stuff. So it was<br />
very instructive to hear this record and hear him play more or less normally.<br />
He could really play the instrument, and for a musician playing popular<br />
music, it was not unattractive.”<br />
Coryell recalled a mid-’60s session at Paul’s home with trumpeter Doc<br />
Severinsen. “I was a little guitar speed-freak at the age of 23,” he said,<br />
“and Les checked me out. I realized I had been ‘regarded’ by Les Paul, so<br />
that was a big thing for me.” Over the decades, Paul was never in short<br />
supply of encouragement for established and aspiring musicians. Al<br />
DiMeola, one recipient, said, “Les was so supportive of me through the<br />
years. He became like a second dad to me. He was my dearest friend.”<br />
At the Iridium, one of the musicians Paul took under his wing was violinist<br />
Christian Howes. Paul called him up onstage many a night. “There<br />
was something about the presence Les had, the reassuring confidence that<br />
he projected,” Howes said. “It helped the music come through. Everyone<br />
felt that from him, and that’s why they played so well.” Howes appreciated<br />
how Paul let a guest, famous or unknown, take charge of the song all<br />
the way through rather than have him do a short solo and then defer to<br />
someone else. Howes commented on Paul’s playing: “If you sat and listened<br />
to him for a full night, you would hear a lot of amazing stuff. He<br />
wasn’t just regurgitating the same ideas, he was being spontaneous, he<br />
was trying things and taking chances. It was really deep what he did.”<br />
Paul interacted well with the Iridium crowd—a mix of guitarists, curious<br />
tourists and staunch fans from all over the world who made yearly<br />
trips to New York because of him. “Les had audiences in the palm of his<br />
hand,” said Howes. “He would always tell jokes. He was very witty. If<br />
somebody in the audience would call out to him, he always had a comeback<br />
very quick.”<br />
Monday nights at the club were also special for Vignola. “The thing<br />
that I will remember most about Les was his enthusiasm for music and<br />
performing and for meeting with people after the shows,” he said. “He<br />
would stay sometimes until 2 o’clock in the morning to make sure that he<br />
was able to meet with every person who stood in line to meet him and take<br />
a picture. What a wonderful man.”<br />
Howes felt the same vibe. “He made every person feel like they were<br />
the most important in the world,” he said. “You always felt like he really<br />
cared deeply about you.”<br />
DOWNBEAT ARCHIVES<br />
42 DOWNBEAT November 2009
Those who counted Paul as a friend knew him as a prankster. John<br />
Pizzarelli laughed when recalling one incident. “I had seen Les<br />
once on TV with Jeff Beck,” he said. “Jeff was playing some real<br />
loud, raucous rock guitar, and Jeff was to his left. So, while Jeff was burning<br />
it up, Les pulled his plug out. I knew this whenever I got up on stage<br />
with Les, so I tried to stay away from him by getting on his other side. One<br />
time we were playing ‘Undecided’ when all of a sudden I heard one of my<br />
strings go EEEEE-eeeeee! Les was tuning down one of my strings!”<br />
Paul was a true character, even when not trying to be funny. Asleep at<br />
the Wheel’s Ray Benson spoke about a session he once did with Bruce<br />
Hornsby, Willie Nelson and country guitar great Grady Martin. “We<br />
recorded all day in Willie’s studio and were finishing up when Willie said,<br />
‘Les Paul’s coming in and we’re going to cut some sides. His flight’s<br />
delayed.’ So, finally, in walks Les. We wave and say, ‘Hey, Les, how ya’ll<br />
doing’ He ignores us and walks right to our sound engineer and says,<br />
‘What’s the slew rate on this board’ That’s part of his genius.”<br />
Visiting from England, Martin Taylor had a memorable time at Paul’s<br />
place, always cluttered with dozens of guitars lying around and stacks of<br />
old tape recorder equipment. “Les started making popcorn while talking to<br />
me about guitars,” he said. “Then we sat down with a couple of guitars<br />
and started playing a lot of old jazz tunes together. Looking over his shoulder<br />
towards the kitchen, I saw that he hadn’t put the lid on the popcorn<br />
machine and popcorn was starting to explode all over all over the room. I<br />
started saying, ‘Hey, Les, the popcorn!’ but he was so totally absorbed by<br />
what we were playing that he was completely oblivious to all this popcorn<br />
bouncing off the wall. I left his house later that evening with the sound of<br />
popcorn crunching under my feet.”<br />
Bucky Pizzarelli can regale you with stories about Paul for hours. “He<br />
used to stop by my house all the time because we were a few miles part,”<br />
he said. “One day I played a record I made with Zoot Sims and Buddy<br />
Rich. I said, ‘Les, I just got this in the mail. You gotta hear this thing!’<br />
Know what he does He took it home with him! Another time, same<br />
thing. We used to talk shop about guitars a lot. I said, ‘George Barnes just<br />
sold me this D’Addario guitar. You got to hear it.’ He heard it, grabbed it<br />
and went home with it. He had it a full year. I had to call him and say,<br />
‘Les, give me that guitar, will you’ But Les said, ‘No! I’ll give you two<br />
Les Pauls for it.’ I said, ‘No! No way! I don’t want to do that!’”<br />
Shortly before his death, Pallo visited Paul in his hospital room. “We<br />
were reminiscing about all the times he had, and a priest walks in,” said<br />
Paul’s loyal friend. “As soon as he comes in the room, a fly does, too. The<br />
priest says, ‘You got a fly in your room.’ Les says, ‘It wasn’t here till you<br />
came in.’ Les looks at me and says, ‘He doesn’t think that’s funny.’ And<br />
the priest didn’t. Les just comes out with these funny things so fast.”<br />
With Paul gone, the Iridium is featuring “Les Paul Guitar Tribute<br />
Mondays.” Each week sees a guest joining the Les Paul Trio. The talent<br />
pool includes Coryell, Vignola, Bucky Pizzarelli, Jose Feliciano, Stanley<br />
Jordan, Bernie Williams, Skunk Baxter and Slash. “I’m the leader of the<br />
show since I’m the oldest member,” said Pallo. “I know all the songs.”<br />
Robillard has the “Wizard of Waukesha” on his mind. “Les meant so<br />
much to me that about six months ago I started working on a project as a<br />
dedication to him, not knowing he was going to leave us. I’m playing several<br />
guitars, using a bass player and recording it all in my home studio, the<br />
way Les would do it. I’m using Sunny Crownover on vocals. She is really<br />
able to catch the feel of the Mary Ford sound.”<br />
In eternal repose, Paul also makes strong, eloquent connections with<br />
Anthony Wilson—and who knows how many thousands of other creative,<br />
committed musicians. “I happen to be working on my own solo recording<br />
that involves the layering of different guitar parts,” Wilson said, “something<br />
that seems almost silly in the light of his daunting achievements in<br />
this area. What has remained in my mind after listening to this master’s<br />
beautiful recordings and watching old videos of him on You Tube is a<br />
sense of awe and inspiration and a wider awareness of what might be possible<br />
as I delve into my multi-tracked exploration.”<br />
Wilson concluded: “Thinking about the great Les Paul during these past<br />
days has made me both sad and joyful. How else to feel about a man who<br />
made such magnificent contributions to world culture in general” DB
CLAY WALKER
Freddy Cole<br />
Does Your Song<br />
By Ted Panken<br />
On a Sunday morning at this summer’s Umbria Jazz Festival in<br />
Perugia, Italy, 78-year-old Freddy Cole, only a few hours<br />
removed from Saturday’s midnight show, considered a question<br />
about retirement.<br />
“No,” the singer-pianist said. “No-no. No-no.” He laughed, “Ha-haha,”<br />
like a descending triplet. “A lot of people ask that. My golfing buddies<br />
say, ‘Man, when are you going to stop’ For what To stay home and<br />
be miserable like you Music keeps you alive.”<br />
It was the final day of Cole’s 12-set, no-nights-off run at Hotel<br />
Brufani, a palatial villa that hosts the festival’s high-profile acts, among<br />
them Wynton Marsalis, Roy Haynes, Cecil Taylor and George Benson,<br />
the latter on tour with his “Unforgettable Tribute to Nat ‘King’ Cole” project,<br />
which incorporated a septet and a 27-piece string orchestra. All of<br />
them dropped into the Sala Raffaello room to hear the maestro sing and<br />
play the Fazioli piano with his trio.<br />
“Damn near all of Wynton’s band was there,” Cole said. “I played<br />
with them the day before Obama’s inauguration at Kennedy Center. The<br />
kids came grabbing me, called me the old man.<br />
“Cecil told me he hadn’t seen me play since Bradley’s,” Cole continued,<br />
referencing the prestigious Greenwich Village piano saloon where he<br />
played nine separate week-long engagements between 1988 and 1991,<br />
and a week apiece in 1994 and 1995. “Carmen McRae, who was a very<br />
good friend, used to come there all the time. She loved one of my tunes<br />
called ‘Brandy’—she’d say, ‘Do my song.’ I’d generally do it.”<br />
At Perugia, Cole performed Benny Carter’s rueful “I Was Wrong,” the<br />
Ella Fitzgerald–Ink Spots World War Two hit “I’m Making Believe,”<br />
Cole Porter’s insouciant “You’re Sensational” and O.C. Smith’s soulful<br />
flagwaver “On The South Side of Chicago,” all of which are on his new<br />
CD, The Dreamer In Me (High Note). But no set was the same, and Cole<br />
treated the flow in a free-associative manner, imparting that even the most<br />
knowledgeable connoisseur of the Great American Songbook would be<br />
hard-pressed to call a tune that he doesn’t know. His brain seemed analogous<br />
to a generously stocked iPod on continuous shuffle, with each sound<br />
file comprising a well-wrought arrangement complete with harmonized<br />
piano-guitar voicings, sectional call-and-response and shout choruses,<br />
each song rendered with such authority as to give the illusion that Cole<br />
had sung it every day for the previous year.<br />
“Once I start to play, things happen,” he said. “Unless you stop me<br />
right then and there, I don’t know what I’m thinking about. Once I see<br />
from the body language that people are into what we’re doing, I’m home<br />
free. I can call whatever I want.”<br />
As an example, Cole noted that on the previous evening, “for the first<br />
time in quite a while,” he performed “I’ll Never Say Never Again,” a<br />
1935 chestnut that Nat Cole covered in 1950. The rendition was one component<br />
of a lengthy interlude, spontaneously triggered by a medley built<br />
upon “Tenderly,” during which he conjured a suite of his big brother’s<br />
good old good ones, segueing seamlessly from one to the next, evoking<br />
the elder Cole both in the timbre of his gravelly, septugenarian voice and<br />
his exemplary diction, never stiff or exaggerated. Cole imprinted each<br />
tune with the stamp of his own personality.<br />
A master of the art of compression and release, he swung unfailingly,<br />
didn’t scat and avoided extremes of tempo and register. Perched sideways<br />
on the piano bench, he wore an ambiguous smile, simultaneously eyeballing<br />
his sidemen and the audience. He accompanied his declamations<br />
with unfailingly supportive, hip progressions; counterstated them with<br />
precise, pithy, bop-tinged solos that blended vocabulary drawn from the<br />
lexicon of John Lewis, Red Garland and Erroll Garner; and phrased them<br />
with a bathos-free subtlety and unpredictable voice-as-instrument suppleness<br />
more akin to Billie Holiday, McRae and Shirley Horn than to his<br />
brother. The delivery, though, contained a panache and directness<br />
imbibed from such master male balladeers as Billy Eckstine and Joe<br />
Williams, both friends and mentors during his adolescence and young<br />
adulthood in Chicago. As the week progressed, the years dripped off his<br />
baritone, which grew more resonant and open.<br />
“Their voices are exactly the same, but that’s genetic,” said singer<br />
Allan Harris, in Perugia to perform Nat Cole repertoire daily on an outdoor<br />
stage in the gardens that face the Brufani’s entrance. “That’s the way<br />
they were raised. Back in the day, the number one thing that a black entertainer<br />
needed to cross over into the white record-buying thing was that<br />
you could understand what the brother was saying. You had to speak the<br />
queen’s language to perfection. Not only does Freddy do that, but he puts<br />
his own little soulful twist on it, more than his brother did. There’s times<br />
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46 DOWNBEAT November 2009<br />
where I prefer Freddy over Nat in that respect,<br />
because Freddy keeps the soul about him continuously<br />
through his performance.”<br />
“With me, every song is a new song,” Cole<br />
said. “I don’t do them like everybody else does<br />
them. When I do seminars, I tell students about<br />
learning a song the right way—the way the composer<br />
wrote it. Then you do what you want.<br />
“You’re not going to hear me scat, either. A<br />
lot of people who do that are good singers, but<br />
my way of thinking is that they have great musicians<br />
with them—let them play. To me, babababa-daba-dop<br />
don’t mean nothin’. We had two<br />
great scatters, and that’s Miss Ella Fitzgerald<br />
and Louis Armstrong. After that, you could say<br />
Jon Hendricks and maybe Eddie Jefferson. They<br />
did it with taste and style. But now you have<br />
these younger singers who think that scatting<br />
makes them a jazz singer. Well, actually, what is<br />
a jazz singer I have no idea. I would say Ella<br />
Fitzgerald was a jazz singer. Sarah Vaughan<br />
could sing anything, so they put the ‘jazz singer’<br />
title on her. Carmen McRae was a great singer.<br />
But Carmen was a stylist, like Billie Holiday,<br />
and my brother, and Billy Eckstine. Lurleen<br />
Hunter, from Chicago. Johnny Hartman, who<br />
was a dear friend. You get a label put on you,<br />
like I say.”<br />
It has been both Cole’s blessing and curse to<br />
be labeled “Nat Cole’s younger brother,” a<br />
descriptive to which, some decades ago, he<br />
penned the riposte “I’m Not My Brother, I’m<br />
Me,” which he sang ebulliently to transition into<br />
the final portion of his Saturday set. Indeed, as<br />
Harris pointed out, although Cole has drawn<br />
extensively on the Nat Cole songbook over the<br />
years on recordings, concerts and special projects<br />
(he duetted with Benson on “I’m Biding<br />
My Time” on Perugia’s main stage), such an<br />
extended homage is indeed a rare thing.<br />
Harris pinpointed an occasion in 1977 at a<br />
club in Atlanta—Cole’s residence since 1970—<br />
when Cole responded to his “mistake of asking<br />
for a Nat Cole song” with precisely the same<br />
musical answer. “Freddy did that song strongly,<br />
and with verve, and he did it demonstratively,”<br />
Harris recalled. “Not like he does it now—<br />
happy and so on. He didn’t really say he wasn’t<br />
about to do any Nat King Cole tunes, but after<br />
he finished it was put to rest that you didn’t ask<br />
Freddy for any of his brother’s songs.”<br />
“Before I started to play at Bradley’s, I was<br />
really ‘Nat Cole’s brother,’” Cole remarked.<br />
“That’s about as blunt as I can put it. Or I was a<br />
‘cocktail piano player,’ whatever that is. You get<br />
tied into one of these corners, and that’s all<br />
you’ll ever be. It’s been a long, hard, worthwhile,<br />
fruitful struggle—what’s the use of crying<br />
about it now<br />
My brother was quite a man. I always say I’d<br />
rather be 10 percent of the man that he was than<br />
an entertainer. If he or my father said something,<br />
or gave you their word, that was it. I try to be<br />
that way. With all the years I’ve been out here,<br />
nobody can say that I didn’t pay anybody, that I<br />
ran out on a hotel bill.”
The Dreamer In Me is Cole’s fifth recording<br />
for High Note in the past five years,<br />
and his 11th collaboration with producer<br />
Todd Barkan, who first recorded Cole in 1993<br />
on his breakout release, Circle Of Love. His<br />
emergence over the past two decades from “Nat<br />
Cole’s younger brother” to the international<br />
stature of his golden years is one of the great<br />
second acts in the annals of show business.<br />
“Besides Tony Bennett, Freddy is one of the<br />
last vestiges of that era where front men told a<br />
story with the song through the voice,” Harris<br />
said. “He’s an older gentleman now, and his<br />
voice may not be as clear as it was 25 years ago,<br />
but his delivery is far beyond anyone younger<br />
than him. Freddy takes you on a magical journey.<br />
You forget about vocal styling. You forget<br />
about smoothness. He’s a master at what he<br />
does, and he doesn’t have to impress anyone.<br />
Most vocalists, including myself, take a whole<br />
song to get our point across. Freddy does it in<br />
one phrase. From all the years he spent in clubs,<br />
touring the world and studying the American<br />
songbook, he completely understands where the<br />
composer is coming from, and stays true to it.”<br />
Cole offers insight into the formation of his<br />
esthetic in rendering O.C. Smith’s paean to the<br />
time “when jazz was king on the South Side of<br />
Chicago” with “all those little honky tonk<br />
joints, filled with people glowing while the cats<br />
was blowing.” Early on, when the family lived<br />
at 57th and Michigan Ave., he met Chicago’s<br />
prime movers and shakers through his brothers—not<br />
only Nat, but also Eddie Cole, a<br />
bassist and successful bandleader who had<br />
played in Europe with Noble Sissle, and singerpianist<br />
Ike Cole (“he could flat-out play”),<br />
whose career consisted primarily of long-haul<br />
hotel gigs. He began to play with the local luminaries<br />
towards the end of the ’40s after graduating<br />
from Waukegan High School, where his<br />
promising football career—he was an all-state<br />
halfback as a junior—abruptly ended after a<br />
tackler stepped on his hand, causing a bone<br />
infection that led to a 21-month hospital stay.<br />
“The medical term for it was ‘tuberculosis<br />
arthritis’,” Cole said. “My brother brought in a<br />
specialist from California. I had three operations<br />
in the same hospital, but instead of stitching<br />
it all up, they drained the bone. It had to<br />
heal. Every day for so many hours, I’d sit with<br />
this concoction that they put me in. Playing<br />
piano was therapeutic—it kept the flexibility in<br />
the wrist.”<br />
Cole entered the trenches at 17, when trumpeter<br />
King Kolax, whose bands were a rite of<br />
passage for several generations of Chicago<br />
musicians, hired him for the piano chair. “I was<br />
struggling to keep up with the other musicians,”<br />
Cole said. “I was young and dumb. We<br />
thought we were hip. We thought we were<br />
playing bebop.”<br />
After a four-year apprenticeship around<br />
Chicago while attending Roosevelt College,<br />
Cole moved to New York in 1953 for a semester<br />
at Juilliard, spent 1955 and 1956 at New<br />
England Conservatory and moved back to New<br />
York in 1957. “I was playing jazz music before<br />
I got to school, and it was difficult to try to fit<br />
into this other mold,” he said. “If somebody<br />
came through with a gig, I’m out of there! Then<br />
I’ve got to go back and catch up. But I’m competitive.<br />
I’m a fighter. I will give out before I<br />
give up. Looking back, I wish I’d applied<br />
myself more. But I did what I had to do, and got<br />
my degree.”<br />
He remained in New York for 13 years,<br />
moving to Atlanta in 1970. “That’s when I was<br />
learning how to do everything,” Cole said. He<br />
worked the East Side supper clubs and steakhouses,<br />
“joints with the crooked-nose guys” and<br />
“corner taverns and bars in the outer boroughs.”<br />
He remembered an early gig with ex-Ellington<br />
drummer Sonny Greer. “He would hold court<br />
every day at Beefsteak Charlie’s, where you’d<br />
see all the old-timers. Sonny told me, ‘Little<br />
Cole, you’ve got to learn how to be a storyteller.’<br />
When you’re a little kid listening to the<br />
teacher read, he said, she’d have you believing<br />
that story if she was really good. It took a while<br />
to get to what Sonny was trying to tell me. It<br />
really hit home when I was in Brazil in 1978—<br />
Brazilian singers sing as if they’re singing<br />
directly to you.”<br />
There were other lessons. “Without saying<br />
it, most of those clubs were run by ‘the fellas,’”<br />
Cole said with a chuckle. “Some would be set<br />
up for a late-night thing when they would all<br />
meet later in the evening, so you had to learn<br />
the ‘Set ’Em Up, Joe’ type songs. Unrequited<br />
love. Then you played clubs where it’s nothing<br />
but swinging, and some clubs where it was<br />
dancing. It was a total learning experience about<br />
how to play, what to play and when to play it.”<br />
It was evident from Cole’s forthcoming itinerary<br />
that he is as old-school in his “make the<br />
gig at all costs” attitude to road life as in song<br />
interpretation. Perugia was the last stop of a<br />
European sojourn that began with engagements<br />
in Switzerland and Slovenia. He would resume<br />
his travels five days hence across the pond with<br />
a rapid-fire succession of East Coast bookings<br />
before resuming his rolling-stone-gathers-no<br />
moss lifestyle with various autumn travels.<br />
“Freddy is invincible,” said Randy<br />
Napoleon, his guitarist. “The schedule in this<br />
band is more difficult than anything else I’ve<br />
done. We’ve done tours where we were out for<br />
weeks, traveling every day, getting up at 4:30 in<br />
the morning, driving two hours to the airport,<br />
catching a flight, maybe transferring and catching<br />
another flight—and then hitting. Or you<br />
drive nine hours in a van, and then get up and<br />
work that night. Freddy loves it. His famous<br />
quote is, ‘Let’s go.’ I’m a young man, I’m in<br />
good shape, but I’ll be bleary-eyed. Four to five<br />
hours of sleep, Freddy’s gone.”<br />
“I’m like an old penny,” Cole said. “I turn<br />
up anywhere. That’s what I’ve done throughout<br />
my years in the business. I don’t look at myself<br />
as a so-called star. I’m just plain Freddy. That’s<br />
all you can be.”<br />
DB
John<br />
Patitucci<br />
At the Crossroads of Melody,<br />
Rhythm and Harmony<br />
By Dan Ouellette<br />
The word “prolific” leaps to mind when considering John<br />
Patitucci’s recent jazz contributions, whether he’s serving as a<br />
support-team member for a range of musicians or leading his<br />
own projects. Accomplished on the double bass as well as the six-string<br />
electric, no bass player has been more in demand of late. In the past year<br />
alone, Patitucci went high-flying on the road with Wayne Shorter as the<br />
anchor and co-rudder of the saxophonist’s otherworldly quartet, imaginatively<br />
filled the bass chair in Roy Haynes’ sparkplug trio and performed<br />
dynamic double-duty with Joe Lovano at the Monterey Jazz Festival on<br />
the saxophonist’s gig with Hank Jones and his trio project featuring<br />
Brian Blade.<br />
On this year’s recording front, Patitucci co-starred with old friend<br />
Jack DeJohnette on the drummer’s luminous Music We Are trio CD (also<br />
with Danilo Pérez) and buoyed Edward Simon’s Poesia CD (another<br />
triad outing with Blade). In addition, Patitucci played the leader card for<br />
the first time since 2006’s Line By Line, delivering the outstanding CD<br />
Remembrance, a collection of 11 originals paying creative tribute to jazz<br />
legends in yet another trio setting (Lovano and Blade, as well as a few<br />
guests augmenting the affair).<br />
At a North Sea Jazz Festival panel discussion with Patitucci in July, he<br />
talked about how his career as a sideman has impacted his role as a leader,<br />
which officially launched while he was with Chick Corea. “You learn<br />
from people you work with,” he said. “Over the years I’ve had the privilege<br />
to apprentice with a lot of older musicians, masters like Chick and<br />
Wayne. From their example, they taught me to choose guys who are<br />
going in a direction and give them space to become a grander version of<br />
who they already are versus hiring a musician and trying to change them.<br />
That kind of micromanaging never works. I’m a composer. I’ve been<br />
writing music since I was 12. When I look for musicians to work with, I<br />
want to find people who will have fun putting their own stamp on my<br />
music.”<br />
Case in point: Patitucci’s all-star trio, whose first-take chemistry captured<br />
on Remembrance translated brilliantly into a live setting at Dizzy’s<br />
Jazz Club in New York this summer. You could hear the shouting<br />
onstage—gleeful, provocative, even flabbergasted in the wake of extemporaneous<br />
surprise—as Patitucci piloted his fellow top-flight improvisers,<br />
focusing point-blank on performing con brio.<br />
While Lovano reserved his expressions of exhilaration to his saxophone<br />
gusts (no hollers, just arched eyebrows as he moved to the side of<br />
the stage to survey the rhythm-team interaction), both Patitucci and Blade<br />
yelped at various junctures of the full-steam-ahead set. “Believe me, it’s<br />
not contrived when we start yelling,” said Patitucci, who also smiled,<br />
laughed and danced his way in step through the set. “We’re not thinking<br />
about anything when we play together. We just react. It’s an act of throwing<br />
something out there and seeing what will happen. I get excited when I<br />
wonder what these guys will do with my music. I hand it to them and let<br />
them run with it. As the bandleader, it’s great to be playing with people<br />
who are interested in telling stories to move people, to inspire them.”<br />
He added, in deference to his longstanding sideman relationship with<br />
Shorter (beginning in 1986), “Wayne says that what he does is like making<br />
a movie that you get swept up into. He’s not about, hey, look at me;<br />
look what I can do. He believes that our quartet with Brian and Danilo is<br />
a collective where each person tells stories and moves the music. It’s like<br />
a community, or as Brian calls his band, a fellowship.”<br />
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LISA STEIN
50 DOWNBEAT November 2009<br />
Nearly a quarter-century ago in 1985, Patitucci fully broke onto the<br />
scene thanks to Corea, who enlisted him into both his Akoustic<br />
and Elektric bands. Patitucci had a steep learning curve ahead of<br />
him, not only as a player faced with negotiating the turns of challenging<br />
material but also as an improviser performing alongside a master of comping.<br />
“Chick was such an inspiration,” Patitucci said. “He believed in my<br />
talent, and he was extremely supportive of my compositions. He encouraged<br />
me to put my own band together. I felt so busy as a sideman with<br />
him that I never thought of myself as a leader. But Chick prodded me. He<br />
got me my first record deal.”<br />
Patitucci’s self-titled debut was released in 1988 on GRP; his fourth<br />
CD, Heart Of The Bass, arrived in 1992 as the first non-Corea album to be<br />
issued on the pianist’s own Stretch label.<br />
Another early association was Michael Brecker, who encouraged the<br />
New York-born but California-based bassist to move back East to his<br />
upstate neighborhood in 1996. At North Sea, Patitucci discussed the rousing<br />
tune “The Mean Time” from Brecker’s final CD, Pilgrimage, where<br />
the support team included Pat Metheny, Herbie Hancock and DeJohnette.<br />
“In that piece I felt that my job was to lay down the time,” he said. “I<br />
could play loose, but I tried to make the markers. Jack is really loose and<br />
needs to be able to color. Mike loved Jack playing dense like that. And<br />
Mike would play something that triggered Jack to launch like a rocket<br />
ship. So I had to make sure everything was grounded—but with a light<br />
touch, not authoritarian so that people could still stretch out, go crazy, go<br />
out on a limb, but know that I was always there to keep control.”<br />
Another drummer with whom Patitucci has been associated is Roy<br />
Haynes, who asked him and Pérez to tour as a trio on the festival circuit in<br />
1998. The dates proved to be so fruitful that they went into the studio and<br />
recorded The Roy Haynes Trio (released in 1999). “Playing with Roy is<br />
always like going to rhythm-section finishing school,” he said. “You learn<br />
so much, especially about the physicality of playing rhythm. Roy plays<br />
with his whole body, not just his hands and feet. He’s head to toes. For<br />
me, this is a huge deal.” Patitucci also marveled at how fortunate he was to<br />
be playing with an artist who embodies the entire history of modern jazz.<br />
“Roy is the link between generations. He played with all my jazz heroes—<br />
Trane, Billie Holiday, Lester Young, Bird, Miles—and his rhythm is still<br />
as firing and crisp as it was in the beginning.”<br />
While Patitucci’s resume teems with sideman duties with jazz masters,<br />
he also picks and chooses dates with creatives whom he admires but may<br />
not be as well-known. He has been instrumental in Edward Simon’s<br />
development as a pianist and bandleader, appearing on two of his remarkable<br />
trio dates with Blade, 2006’s Unicity and this year’s Poesia. As<br />
Patitucci listened to the six-string electric bass tune “One For J.P.” from<br />
Poesia, which Simon wrote in his honor, he laughed: “That’s what happens<br />
when someone writes a song for you. It’s always hard to play. Ed<br />
writes challenging music. There are some odd bars in this one, but Brian is<br />
so comfortable playing any style of music that he makes it feel like he’s<br />
working on a straight groove.”<br />
Simon explained that he loves playing with Patitucci (“one of the most<br />
complete musicians I’ve had the pleasure of working with”) because of his<br />
unbridled and almost childlike enthusiasm. “It feels liberating to play with<br />
someone like John because you know that no matter what direction you<br />
may decide to go he is always right there ready to support you or perhaps<br />
lead you,” Simon said. “He knows how to interact in a rhythm section and<br />
yet is a strong soloist. Being an accomplished composer himself, John<br />
knows how to bring out the details in a composition or arrangement that<br />
make it stand out.”<br />
At the end of the North Sea session, Patitucci listened to the danceable<br />
classical-meets-funk “Messiaen’s Gumbo” from Remembrance. He<br />
smiled and explained how the tune was based on classical composer<br />
Olivier Messiaen’s modes of limited transposition. “This is based on the<br />
third mode, which intrigued me,” he explained. “I decided to write a snaky<br />
line and run it over a New Orleans sensibility. I was real curious to discover<br />
what the mix would sound like.”<br />
At Dizzy’s a month later, the trio lit into the piece with Patitucci on<br />
electric six-string leading the way. He opened his solo with guitar-like
uns, and then was joined by Blade’s loud clash.<br />
Lovano waited, watching the ebb and flow of conversation<br />
between the two rhythm aces, and then<br />
joined in with angular blasts. Patitucci kept the<br />
improvisational fury alive by instigating new routes<br />
of exploration.<br />
For Patitucci, the trio project was a dream-cometrue<br />
session that took him nearly eight years to pull<br />
together. He had first assembled Lovano and Blade<br />
for a quartet tune on his 2001 Communion album,<br />
which also featured Brad Mehldau. Because the<br />
pianist was unavailable for a rehearsal due to scheduling<br />
conflicts, the bassist, saxophonist and drummer<br />
got together as a trio just to try the music on for size.<br />
“What a treat that was and an experience I can never<br />
forget,” Patitucci said. “The feeling was mutual, and<br />
we talked about doing something together, just the three of us, someday.”<br />
Because of busy calendars, the trio idea was shelved. But as Patitucci<br />
approached his 50th birthday, he decided the time had come to open up<br />
some schedule windows. Still, he had doubts. “It was a little daunting to<br />
me,” he said. “I looked at a trio date like Sonny Rollins’ Freedom Suite<br />
with Oscar Pettiford and Max Roach [in 1958], and thought, does the<br />
world need another trio record They were all our shining beacons. But we<br />
decided to have some fun—three improvisers of this generation playing<br />
some of my music.”<br />
Arguably Patitucci’s strongest CD, Remembrance pays homage to<br />
his musical heroes, including passed jazz titans (the bouncing, joyful<br />
sendoff to Freddie Hubbard, “Blues For Freddie”) and beyond-jazz<br />
greats (such as the cooking number “Mali,” dedicated to the late Malian<br />
guitarist Ali Farka Toure). The CD features the leader designing the<br />
eclectic compositional architecture and providing the rhythmic authority<br />
AYANO HISA<br />
on both acoustic and electric basses. Highlights<br />
include Lovano dancing with tenor sax through<br />
“Sonny Side” (a bow to Rollins) and Blade fascinating<br />
throughout, instigating the rhythmic drive.<br />
Backstage after the set at Dizzy’s, Lovano said that<br />
he appreciated the freedom of expression that Patitucci<br />
afforded in his music. “John wrote with that in mind,”<br />
he said. “He wanted to keep things open so that we<br />
could feed off each other. It opened up a lot of opportunity<br />
to be creative. He understands how valuable it is<br />
in a trio setting to share the space, to choose tunes that<br />
will work in the trio concept.”<br />
Back at North Sea, after the panel session, Patitucci<br />
was ready to head to another venue in the festival’s<br />
labyrinth of performance spaces to set up shop with<br />
Haynes and pianist Dave Kikowski (subbing for<br />
Pérez, who was home recuperating from a ruptured Achilles tendon). He<br />
considered the importance of an instrumental role that’s typically viewed<br />
as less than glamorous. “One of the most exciting things as a bassist is that<br />
you are at the crossroads of the melody, rhythm and harmony,” he said.<br />
“You’re at the center. You’re right in the middle of the music. I tell my<br />
students, we have to be able to give people the whole tune, to make people<br />
recognize it even if the pianist isn’t playing it. You’re playing bass but<br />
you’re also composing in the moment, developing bass lines that have<br />
sturdiness and integrity.”<br />
It’s this penchant for composition that has jettisoned Petitucci to the<br />
head of the bass class, a step beyond merely giving the music its gravity.<br />
“You go back in musical history, way before jazz, and see how musicians<br />
like Bach developed beautifully crafted bass lines,” he said. “It all<br />
comes down to seeing yourself as a composer, crafting lines that can be<br />
grasped.”<br />
DB
INSIDE REVIEWS<br />
Masterpiece AAAAA Excellent AAAA Good AAA Fair AA Poor A<br />
59 Jazz<br />
63 Blues<br />
67 Beyond<br />
71 Historical<br />
75 Books<br />
CHRIS SCHMITT PHOTOGRAPHY<br />
Roy Hargrove Big Band<br />
Emergence<br />
GROOVIN’ HIGH/EMARCY B0013289<br />
AAA 1 /2<br />
If Roy Hargrove’s music boasts a signature trait,<br />
it’s probably swagger. As a soloist the trumpeter<br />
has made a point of embracing audaciousness<br />
and authority, and the heroes he cites, from<br />
Dizzy Gillespie to Clifford Brown, are from the<br />
“solid sender” school—guys who like to wail.<br />
So when Hargrove put together his big band a<br />
decade or so ago, it had a pointed bravado. From<br />
their home at New York’s Jazz Gallery, they<br />
bounced through the energetic tunes, crashing<br />
the limits of their charts as often as following<br />
their directions.<br />
That rambunctiousness marks the group’s<br />
first CD. Hargrove, who’s had more than a passing<br />
interest in Afro-Cuban music over the years,<br />
hits the gas during “Mambo For Roy,” a<br />
hopped-up riff tune that Chucho Valdés donated<br />
to their book. As the boss takes his solo, the<br />
action erupts and an explanation spills forth.<br />
This is a player’s program just as much as it is<br />
an ensemble effort. Time and again, band members<br />
step forward for a moment in the spotlight.<br />
With the exclamation of the arrangement nudging<br />
him on, it’s a wildly passionate Bruce<br />
Williams who roars through an alto solo on<br />
“Requiem”; and the Vincent Chandler trombone<br />
storm that follows is equally animated. Hargrove<br />
likes his teammates to have their say, sanctioning<br />
flourish after flourish. Even the ballads<br />
sound brawny.<br />
An oddity: The music sometimes seems<br />
anachronistic. Compared to the flurry of progressive<br />
big bands doing business these days<br />
(John Hollenbeck, Darcy James Argue,<br />
Matthew Herbert), the group’s adherence to<br />
standard swing motifs winds up flaunting some<br />
well-worn conventions. From the readymade<br />
shuffle “Ms. Garvey, Ms. Garvey” to the routine<br />
romp through “September In The Rain,” there<br />
are moments when the designs could use a shot<br />
of something a tad more unique. (And isn’t time<br />
to declare a moratorium on “My Funny<br />
Valentine”) Large ensembles led by Joe<br />
Henderson and Charles Tolliver have both found<br />
ways to avoid the obvious while embracing a<br />
trad blues vocabulary. The writing on<br />
Emergence is a bit lackluster.<br />
That said, team Hargrove gets over on craft<br />
and spirit. If ever a leader imbued his art with<br />
the essence of his own personality, it’s this<br />
dude with this band. I guess swagger, lined<br />
with lyricism and fueled by fierceness, is still a<br />
power booster.<br />
—Jim Macnie<br />
Emergence: Velera; Ms. Garvey, Ms. Garvey; My Funny Valentine;<br />
Mambo For Roy; Requiem; September In The Rain; Everytime We<br />
Say Goodbye; La Puerta; Roy Allan; Tschpiso; Trust. (70:04)<br />
Personnel: Roy Hargrove, trumpet, flugelhorn, vocal; Frank<br />
Greene, Greg Gisbert, Darren Barrett, Ambrose Akinmusire,<br />
trumpets; Jason Jackson, Vincent Chandler, Saunders<br />
Sermons, trombones; Max Siegel, bass trombone; Bruce<br />
Williams, Justin Robinson, alto sax, flute; Norbert Statchel, Keith<br />
Loftis, tenor sax, flute; Jason Marshall, baritone sax, flute; Gerald<br />
Clayton, piano; Danton Boller, bass; Saul Rubin, guitar; Montez<br />
Coleman, drums; Roland Guerrero, percussion; Roberta<br />
Gambarini, vocals.<br />
Ordering info: emarcy.com<br />
»<br />
November 2009 DOWNBEAT 53
Grant Stewart<br />
Plays The Music<br />
Of Duke Ellington<br />
& Billy Strayhorn<br />
SHARP NINE RECORDS 1044<br />
AAA 1 /2<br />
If Grant Stewart<br />
were a nuclear missile,<br />
we’d all be<br />
dead. Such is his<br />
history of flying<br />
undetected beneath<br />
the proverbial radar<br />
for nearly 20 years.<br />
And if a tidy, wellgroomed<br />
virtuosity and a solid assurance were<br />
the stuff of stardom, he would be a regular<br />
Critics Poll hog by now. But we’re all alive,<br />
and stardom evidently has other priorities.<br />
So here I am meeting Stewart now, after<br />
about 20 missed CDs (four under his name),<br />
and feeling dereliction in my radar. By way of<br />
placing him in his proper universe in the way<br />
critics do, I will call on other players perhaps<br />
more familiar to serve as adjectives. He would<br />
fit in easily wherever the likes of Harry Allen,<br />
Scott Hamilton and Ken Peplowski are found<br />
today; or where Al Cohn, Zoot Sims, or Sonny<br />
Rollins might have been found a couple of generations<br />
ago in their salad days. Yes, even<br />
Rollins, whom I heard on a recent reissue of<br />
some of his early ’50s Prestige sides with Miles<br />
Davis when they all swung with such a concise<br />
precision.<br />
But everyone has done precision now, I<br />
suppose, and moved on to less impounded<br />
frontiers to find individuality. Stewart’s charm<br />
is that he hasn’t moved on, or at least not that<br />
far. He is more or less a custodian of the classic<br />
tenor vocabulary, and an unusually fine one<br />
with a straight, rich sound, light on vibrato, and<br />
a phrasing that flows in tight, crisp lines. He<br />
works here in a standard<br />
quartet setting that is of<br />
the same swing-to-bop<br />
mind.<br />
If one is of a pedantic<br />
bent, it’s possible to<br />
infer fleeting references<br />
of familiarity, real or<br />
imagined: say, Lockjaw<br />
Davis as Stewart skips<br />
like a stone over the<br />
ultra fast “It Don’t Mean<br />
A Thing;” or Coleman<br />
Hawkins’ swagger as he<br />
chugs through “The<br />
Feeling Of Jazz.” Feel free even to hear whiffs<br />
of John Coltrane in “Angelica” from the Duke<br />
Ellington-Coltrane Impulse! session, though<br />
Stewart shoots through it with a graceful<br />
aplomb while Trane probed and dug. And there<br />
are the little winks to bebop at the entrance and<br />
exit to “I Let A Song Go Out Of My Heart.”<br />
But none of this is doted upon or made to<br />
preen. In this salute to Ellington and Billy<br />
Strayhorn, it all fuses in a cohesive weave that<br />
is neither retro nor assertively contemporary. If<br />
your threshold of surprise requires a jarring<br />
iconoclasm or subversive counter-intuitiveness,<br />
you won’t find it in Stewart’s tenor. The surprises<br />
are unannounced, small and concealed in<br />
the familiar, although in choosing the material<br />
Stewart has taken a few lesser-traveled roads in<br />
the Ellington songbook. But they provide him<br />
with a lively ride. —John McDonough<br />
Plays The Music Of Duke Ellington & Billy Strayhorn:<br />
Raincheck; Tonight I Shall Sleep; Angelica (a.k.a. Purple Gazelle);<br />
I Let A Song Go Out Of My Heart; It Don’t Mean A Thing;<br />
Something To Live For; The Star Crossed Lovers; The Feeling<br />
Of Jazz. (59:23)<br />
Personnel: Grant Stewart, tenor saxophone; Tardo Hammer,<br />
piano; Paul Gill, bass; Joe Farnsworth, drums.<br />
»<br />
Ordering info: sharpnine.com<br />
Rez Abbasi<br />
Things To Come<br />
SUNNYSIDE 1236<br />
AAAA 1 /2<br />
If you wanted to make a case for the new Indo-<br />
Pak jazz cartel, this record would make a perfect<br />
Exhibit A. Not only is its leader, guitarist and<br />
composer of Pakistani heritage (born there, raised<br />
in L.A.), but it includes the scene’s two most<br />
prominent figures, alto saxophonist Rudresh<br />
Mahanthappa and pianist Vijay Iyer. But what<br />
makes Things To Come a prime piece of evidence<br />
is that it really doesn’t sound like it’s trying<br />
to put too sharp a point on its ethnic particularity.<br />
It’s too natural to be that heavy-handed.<br />
The logic of a South Asian music crossover<br />
with jazz is clear. They arguably represent the<br />
two most developed improvising systems in<br />
world culture. The challenge, since the period of<br />
the initial Indo-Jazz Fusion experiments in the<br />
’60s, has been to find a more integrated way to<br />
explore the musics’ commonalities. Abbasi is<br />
extremely successful in this pursuit. He’s an outstanding<br />
instrumentalist, no question, but the<br />
Eldar<br />
Virtue<br />
MASTERWORKS JAZZ<br />
88697-46236<br />
AAA<br />
Virtuosity can be a<br />
curse, often leading<br />
to congestion,<br />
exhibitionism and<br />
plain bad taste.<br />
Eldar Djangirov,<br />
the Kyrgyzstanborn<br />
pianist who<br />
used to regularly<br />
dazzle crowds at<br />
the Lionel Hampton International Jazz Festival<br />
while still in his early teens, started out life as<br />
most prodigies do: a flurry of characters in<br />
search of an author. Now 22, Eldar (who goes<br />
by his first name only) is finding an expressive<br />
voice of his own, but his<br />
still-dazzling chops often<br />
take him on extraneous<br />
excursions.<br />
Eldar describes Virtue<br />
as a “soundtrack” for his<br />
recent life in New York<br />
and, indeed, it reflects the<br />
manic whirlwind of that<br />
city by day, as well as<br />
some of its tender night<br />
moods. The main ingredients<br />
are knotty, driving,<br />
rhythms; pulsing vamps;<br />
rhapsodic East European<br />
pyrotechnics; and screaming<br />
solos on both acoustic and electric keyboards<br />
(sometimes with one hand on each) that<br />
careen like kites in a hurricane. It’s not always<br />
a pleasant sound—a throbbing, electric bassdriven<br />
power trio that depends more on fitful<br />
energy, zigzag changeups and crescendos than<br />
logical musical development, with solos that<br />
feel more episodic than narrative. Ironically,<br />
the ballads, unadorned and played with extraordinary<br />
feeling, outshine the high-energy cuts.<br />
Of the up-tempo tunes, Eldar hits closest to<br />
the mark with “Long Passage,” an insinuating<br />
vamp that really gets under your skin. His<br />
acoustic solo, unfolding as a series of bursts<br />
and fleet runs, tells a real story, with bassist<br />
Armando Gola at one point coming way down,<br />
leaving the piano naked; on electric, Eldar is<br />
jubilant. “Daily Living,” with a bumble-beeflight<br />
theme recalling classical rhapsodies, has<br />
some of the same strengths, combining tenderness<br />
with throbbing, though it devolves into<br />
thick vamps and anthemic nonsense.<br />
Elsewhere, the up numbers feel over-energized<br />
(though I like the urgent 7/4 vamp of “The<br />
Exorcist”) with Eldar ripping crisp, flying-finger<br />
runs for lack of anything better to do.<br />
54 DOWNBEAT November 2009
framework for the playing here is what really<br />
catches my ear. With great ease Abbasi creates<br />
arrangements with parts in overlapping but different<br />
rhythmic cycles, keeping them light and<br />
airy so they don’t obscure one another. The<br />
result, on a track like “Hard Colors,” is a constant<br />
set of shifting relationships between the<br />
fixed elements, which becomes a springboard<br />
for improvisations.<br />
Whether on resonant, steel-string acoustic or<br />
compact-toned, rather compressed electric,<br />
Abbasi’s playing is a pleasure. His little duet<br />
with Indian vocalist Kiran Ahluwalia (who also<br />
sings on three other tracks) on the title track<br />
offers one very intriguing version of the possible<br />
hybrids, with unusual, evocative harmonic hues.<br />
The linear ideas on tracks like “Why Me Why<br />
Them” and “Insulin” remind me a bit of some of<br />
Henry Threadgill’s writing, especially when<br />
articulated by Mahanthappa. His alto playing is<br />
out front here and there, as on the impassioned<br />
“Realities Of Chromaticism,” and his playing<br />
always takes things up a notch.<br />
Iyer is expert at finding the most unusual<br />
rhythmic morsels in a piece. He’s got an ability<br />
to manage the thunderous chording left hand<br />
without having it plod, which is a hazard; hear<br />
him manage it with a Prokofievian flair on<br />
“Dream Suite.” But Things To Come is a group<br />
realization of a very ambitious batch of compositional<br />
notions, and it’s the band that brings it<br />
home. Bassist Johannes Weidenmueller and<br />
drummer Dan Weiss are evanescent, but gravitational,<br />
just the ticket for these tricky turns.<br />
—John Corbett<br />
Things To Come: Dream State; Air Traffic; Hard Colors; Things<br />
To Come; Why Me Why Them; Within Sanity; Realities Of<br />
Chromaticism; Insulin. (58:46)<br />
Personnel: Rez Abbasi, guitar; Rudresh Mahanthappa, alto saxophone;<br />
Vijay Iyer, piano; Johannes Weidenmueller, bass; Dan Weiss,<br />
drums; Kiran Ahluwalia, vocals (2, 3, 4, 6); Mike Block, cello (2, 7).<br />
»<br />
By contrast, the pianist’s original ballad<br />
“Iris” is flat-out gorgeous, as is the rippling<br />
romance of his “Lullaby Fantazia.” His edition<br />
of the classic ballad “Estate,” untouched<br />
by virtuosity, feels like it comes straight from<br />
the heart.<br />
When Eldar started out he sounded like<br />
another Oscar Peterson, which was dismaying,<br />
of course, since the world already had an<br />
Oscar Peterson. Kudos to Eldar, then, for seeking<br />
his own voice. If he can keep his own fingers<br />
out of his way, he likely will find it.<br />
—Paul de Barros<br />
Virtue: Exposition; Insensitive; Blues Sketch In Clave; Iris; The<br />
Exorcist; Lullaby Fantazia; Blackjack; Long Passage; Estate; Daily<br />
Living; Vanilla Sky. (69:45)<br />
Personnel: Eldar, piano and electric keyboards; Armando Gola,<br />
electric bass; Ludwig Afonso, drums; Joshua Redman (1), Felipe<br />
Lamoglia (3, 7, 8), tenor saxophone; Lamoglia, soprano saxophone<br />
(11); Nicholas Payton (7), trumpet.<br />
»<br />
Ordering info: sunnysiderecords.com<br />
Ordering info: sonymasterworks.com<br />
CDs<br />
»<br />
Roy Hargrove Big Band<br />
Emergence<br />
CRITICS»<br />
Grant Stewart<br />
Plays The Music Of Duke Ellington & Billy Strayhorn<br />
Rez Abbasi<br />
Things To Come<br />
Eldar<br />
Virtue<br />
The HOT Box<br />
Critics’ Comments<br />
Roy Hargrove Big Band, Emergence<br />
Great idea! Roy with big band. Exhilarated by Hargrove’s kick-off original, “Valera,” absolutely knocked<br />
out by Max Siegel’s stunning arrangement of “My Funny Valentine” and delighted to hear Roberta<br />
Gambarini sing anything, I experienced mood swings due to crazy variety of material (and arrangers),<br />
with Frank Lacy’s bombastic “Requiem” tipping the balance to a profound “Oh, well.” —Paul de Barros<br />
A drab start. Then a beefy big band blues that promises Hargrove his best CD showcase in years. Alas,<br />
the next nine tunes don’t exactly constitute legal breach of promise, merely a somewhat missed opportunity.<br />
It’s good, Roy plays like a pro, and Gambarini is lovely. But little zip. —John McDonough<br />
Hargrove’s is a tight big band: honed, precise, hefty. Emphasis on variety serves the program well.<br />
Dig the epic “Requiem,” the bright, bluesy “Ms. Garvey, Ms. Garvey,” the slinky “Trust” and the<br />
perky Latin changeup “La Puerta.” The r&b infusions on “Roy Allen” almost work, but in the end<br />
feel like a misstep.<br />
—John Corbett<br />
Grant Stewart, Plays The Music Of Duke Ellington & Billy Strayhorn<br />
Some tenor players just have it, whatever “it” is, and you can hear it from the first note. Stewart’s got a<br />
brilliant delivery, booting and bustling with ideas, also deploying restraint, on this forcefully mainstream,<br />
hard-swinging date. Lovely dedication, nothing untoward.<br />
—John Corbett<br />
Lovely, easy flow of ideas, warm tone and great feel for laying behind the beat from this tenor traditionalist<br />
(as in Hawk and Pres, not Trane and Sonny). But there’s something slightly enervated about Stewart’s<br />
approach that makes me not want to really rush back to it.<br />
—Paul de Barros<br />
He becomes more and more impressive as that fat tenor tone deepens—and it’s really blossomed in the<br />
last few years. The Ellingtonia program is a nice fit with the Bean & Pres lingo the saxophonist is fascinated<br />
with, making this disc one of his most enjoyable.<br />
—Jim Macnie<br />
Rez Abbasi, Things To Come<br />
John John Jim Paul<br />
McDonough Corbett Macnie de Barros<br />
AAA 1 /2 AAA 1 /2 AAA 1 /2 AAA<br />
AAA 1 /2 AAAA AAA 1 /2 AA 1 /2<br />
AA 1 /2 AAAA 1 /2 AAA 1 /2 AAAA<br />
AAA AAA AAA AAA<br />
Basically a fusion set with an Indian paint job. Abbasi’s undisputed talents take a back seat to Vijay Iyer’s<br />
slinking, spidery lines, which exude pure intellect. Rudresh Mahanthappa’s stone cold alto and drilling<br />
attack slip into the irksome epileptic spasms that have stalled the avant garde for decades.<br />
—John McDonough<br />
The guitarist creates little puzzles for his team to solve, and the lyricism they bring to their collective efforts<br />
makes the process both enjoyable and fascinating. The syncopation, kinetics and swing have equal say,<br />
and everything flows from there. Best part: Abbasi isn’t afraid to show his heart.<br />
—Jim Macnie<br />
Smart, original, nicely dovetailed fusion of South Asian and jazz concepts. Abbasi is a team player, so it’s<br />
not so much about his gargoyling guitar as the liquid rhythms, complex meters and integrated ensemble<br />
feel. With Rudresh Mahanthappa and Vijay Iyer on your team, it’s hard to come up short. —Paul de Barros<br />
Eldar, Virtue<br />
Prodigies are saddled with all sorts of unreal expectations, but this one’s managing some of the early hurdles.<br />
Eldar is virtuous in terms of speed and dexterity; the musical conception is flashy, romantic, with Brad<br />
Mehldau-ish complexity if not always complementary depth. Significant contravening lapses in taste,<br />
though, like every time the synth takes over.<br />
—John Corbett<br />
An overly hectic rhythm section sometimes crowds the music, whose staccato, jittery energy provides a<br />
good show of virtuosity. Solos tend to just zoom up and down scales, though Elder and Redman have a<br />
succinct exchange on “Explosion.” The pianist’s full measure comes on “Estate,” a ballad that offers room<br />
and something to work with.<br />
—John McDonough<br />
The rating accounts for the chops and chemistry it takes to achieve this level of intricate interplay. But it’s<br />
still garish and ultimately numbing. PS: lose the synth.<br />
—Jim Macnie<br />
November 2009 DOWNBEAT 55
Bob Florence Limited Edition<br />
Legendary<br />
MAMA 1037<br />
AAA 1 /2<br />
Big band arrangers face challenges similar to<br />
those that confront visual artists who choose<br />
to paint still-life tableaux more or less as<br />
their predecessors from centuries ago, or<br />
pianists who like their forebears build careers<br />
on the shoulders of Chopin and Beethoven.<br />
All must confront choices that come with<br />
their territory, the most critical being to balance<br />
between the accepted boundaries and<br />
pushing outside of them.<br />
The late Bob Florence offers Legendary<br />
as proof of his mastery within the parameters<br />
of his idiom. On these nine tracks, he<br />
flaunts two essential traits: a flawless sense of<br />
orchestration and, where appropriate, a sense of<br />
humor that acknowledges and ameliorates the<br />
fact that little effort is made here to undo anyone’s<br />
preconceptions.<br />
Take, for example, “Geezerhood,” one of<br />
four Florence compositions featured here. Not at<br />
all surprisingly given the title, it’s a program<br />
piece, with an intro that suggests the maundering<br />
of two old-timers, each represented by a baritone<br />
sax. More voices enter the conversation, wandering<br />
into soliloquies that unexpectedly lock<br />
together into a slow-rocking, brass-punched passage—which<br />
then dissolves into more absent<br />
doodling. This is clever, sly and skillful all at the<br />
same time, but it also suggests that high-toned<br />
slapstick is one of the only alternatives available<br />
to those who want to add spice to a tasty but<br />
familiar recipe.<br />
Another device, the element of surprise,<br />
works only on familiar tunes. A quick brass stab<br />
and a figure swirling in 3/4 kick off the first<br />
track; but where the listener might expect it to<br />
lead to—say, Leonard Bernstein's “Cool”—it<br />
instead leads to a solo by Larry Koonse, whispered<br />
over a purring swing, that takes a minute<br />
to reveal the outlines of “Take The ‘A’ Train.”<br />
Similarly, Florence launches “Suicide Is<br />
Painless” with the lick that actually kicks off the<br />
TV theme, and then buries it in swirls of horn<br />
lines and harmonies until the theme presents<br />
itself a minute later, like a rabbit pulled from a<br />
hat. But surprise works in reverse, too, on a brief<br />
reading of “Auld Lang Syne,” which closes the<br />
album with what sounds at first like an ominous<br />
overlay of light and dark, reminiscent in a way<br />
of Ives’ “The Unanswered Question,” but then<br />
lapses perhaps too quickly into a cushion of<br />
standard harmonies before disappearing finally<br />
back into shadow.<br />
Still, it adds up to a bravura farewell from<br />
Florence, whose legacy is confirmed, along with<br />
the potential and paradox of mainstream arrangement,<br />
on Legendary. —Robert L. Doerschuk<br />
Legendary: A Train; I’m All Smiles; Suicide Is Painless; Fluffy;<br />
Geezerhood; Limited Edition Express; Luci; You Must Believe<br />
In Spring; Auld Lang Syne. (71:21)<br />
Personnel: Bob Florence, arranger, composer (4, 5, 6, 7), piano<br />
(9); Don Shelton, Kim Richmond, Tom Peterson, Jeff Driskill,<br />
Bob Efford, Bob Carr, Rusty Higgins, woodwinds; Carl<br />
Saunders, Pete DeSiena, Steve Huffsteter, Ron Stout, Larry<br />
Lunetta, trumpets; Alex Iles, Bob McChesney, Scott Whitfield,<br />
Dave Ryan, Jacques Voyemant, trombones; Craig Ware, bass<br />
trombone; Larry Koonse, guitar; Alan Broadbent, piano; Trey<br />
Henry, bass; Peter Erskine, drums.<br />
»<br />
Ordering info: summitrecords.com<br />
56 DOWNBEAT November 2009
Art<br />
Pepper<br />
The Art<br />
History<br />
Project:<br />
Unreleased<br />
Art Vol. IV<br />
WIDOW’S TASTE<br />
09001<br />
AAAA<br />
The Art History Project: Unreleased Art Vol.<br />
IV chronicles Art Pepper’s transformation<br />
from a prototypical West Coast alto player to<br />
one who assimilated the harmonic innovations<br />
that redefined jazz in the 1960s. Culled from<br />
the vaults at Contemporary, Savoy and<br />
Capitol, the three CDs document each stage of<br />
Pepper’s career: Pure Art (1951–1960) focuses<br />
on his early sessions as a leader; Hard Art<br />
(1960–1968) on the years interrupted by his<br />
narcotics convictions and incarcerations; and<br />
Consummate Art (1975–1982) on his remarkable<br />
twilight. (Pepper’s widow, the former<br />
Laurie Babitz, released the anthology on her<br />
Widow’s Taste imprint.)<br />
Pepper reemerged in the 1970s after several<br />
years at Synanon, a residential drug treatment<br />
center in Santa Monica, Calif. He was buoyed<br />
by the release of Living Legend (1975), his first<br />
studio album since 1960. The 1960s tracks on<br />
Hard Art recount Pepper’s fruitful, but frustrating,<br />
immersion in John Coltrane’s music.<br />
Pepper even switched to tenor saxophone while<br />
trying to reconcile Coltrane’s sonic palette.<br />
By 1968 Pepper had reclaimed the alto; his<br />
tone had lost its gloss (and much of its vibrato).<br />
He seemed to spit the notes from his horn,<br />
while displaying a newfound penchant for the<br />
altissimo register and rough staccato articulation.<br />
An unreleased 1964 session foreshadows<br />
the freedom that would become a hallmark a<br />
decade later. On “Track 2,” “That Crazy<br />
Blues” and “D Section,” Pepper abandons the<br />
fluid language of bop for a more visceral solo<br />
voice and simple compositions relying on<br />
bluesy riffs.<br />
“Caravan,” from a 1978 performance in<br />
Japan, highlights Consummate Art, and perhaps<br />
the entire anthology. Pepper throws all his<br />
weight behind a fevered solo. The rhythm section<br />
matches his intensity which escalates<br />
throughout the nearly 13-minute track. Yet for<br />
all its rawness, the track swings especially hard.<br />
Pepper revisits his early repertoire on “Angel<br />
Wings” and “Historia De Un Amor” in a 1980<br />
reunion with Russ Freeman and Jack Sheldon.<br />
The 1950s tracks on Pure Art have been previously<br />
reissued. Pepper performs mostly bop<br />
(“Pepper Returns,” “Straight Life”) and ballads<br />
(“What’s New”) in the company of Warne<br />
Marsh, Jack Montrose, Hampton Hawes,<br />
Freeman and Sheldon. Pure Art reinforces the<br />
notion that Pepper’s second act ended too soon.<br />
had finally reaped the rewards that his talent<br />
merited.<br />
—Eric Fine<br />
The Art History Project: Disc 1: Pure Art (1951-1960): Art<br />
Pepper; Fascinatin’ Rhythm; Patricia; Tickle Toe; Pepper Returns;<br />
Mambo De La Pinta; These Foolish Things; Cool Bunny; Besame<br />
Mucho; Art’s Oregano; Diane; I Can’t Believe That You’re In Love<br />
With Me; Straight Life; Everything Happens To Me; Nutmeg;<br />
What’s New; Begin the Beguine. (68:55)<br />
Personnel: Art Pepper, alto saxophone; Stan Kenton Innovations<br />
Orchestra (unlisted personnel); Carl Perkins, piano; Ben Tucker,<br />
bass; Chuck Flores, drums; Jack Sheldon, trumpet; Russ Freeman,<br />
piano; Leroy Vinnegar, bass; Shelly Manne, drums; Bob Whitlock,<br />
bass; Bobby White, drums; Hampton Hawes, piano; Joe<br />
Mondragon, bass; Larry Bunker, drums; Gary Frommer, drums;<br />
Warne Marsh, tenor saxophone; Ronnie Ball, piano; Jack Montrose,<br />
tenor saxophone; Claude Williamson, piano; Monty Budwig, bass.<br />
Disc 2: Hard Art (1960-1968): Rehearsal; Track Two; So In<br />
Love; Talk; That Crazy Blues; D Section; Chelsea Bridge. (42:37)<br />
Personnel: Art Pepper, alto saxophone; Frank Strazzeri, piano;<br />
Hersh Hammel, bass; Bill Goodwin, drums; Charles Owens, alto<br />
saxophone, flute, clarinet; Don Menza, tenor saxophone, flute; Pat<br />
LaBarbera, tenor, flute; John Laws, baritone saxophone, bass clarinet;<br />
Al Porcino, Bill Prince, Ken Faulk, Dave Culp, trumpets; Jim<br />
Trimble, Rick Stepton, Peter Graves, trombones; Walt Namuth,<br />
guitar; Joe Azarello, piano; Gary Walters, bass; Buddy Rich, drums.<br />
Disc 3: Consummate Art (1975-1982): Caravan; Lost Life;<br />
Landscape; Angel Wings; Historia De Un Amor; Mambo Koyama;<br />
That’s Love. (69:17)<br />
Personnel: Art Pepper, alto saxophone; Milcho Leviev, piano;<br />
Bob Magnusson, bass; Carl Burnett, drums; Smith Dobson,<br />
piano; Jim Nichols, bass; Brad Bilhorn, drums; Stanley Cowell,<br />
piano; George Mraz, bass; Ben Riley, drums; Jack Sheldon, trumpet;<br />
Russ Freeman, piano; Magnusson, bass; Burnett, drums.<br />
Ordering info: straightlife.info<br />
»<br />
November 2009 DOWNBEAT 57
Marcus Strickland Trio<br />
Idiosyncrasies<br />
STRICK MUZIK 004<br />
AAAA<br />
There have been countless saxophone<br />
trio recordings since Sonny<br />
Rollins essentially pioneered the<br />
form on Way Out West. But upon<br />
slipping Marcus Strickland’s latest<br />
take into the deck, the listener can’t<br />
help but leapfrog over half a century’s<br />
worth of refinements back to the<br />
1957 original.<br />
The two sessions share not only<br />
instrumentation but a similar sense<br />
of purpose: the lack of a chordal<br />
instrument means that the saxophonist is more<br />
firmly tethered to melody, but both leaders<br />
find a strange freedom in this seeming limitation.<br />
Like Newk before him, Strickland has<br />
assembled a set of tunes with strong, direct<br />
melodies that inspire boundless reveries.<br />
And though he doesn’t don spurs and a 10-<br />
gallon hat to explore the terrain of country<br />
music, Strickland wanders just as far afield to<br />
find his material. The songs by Stevie Wonder<br />
and Outkast may not be particularly suprising<br />
given Strickland’s recent funk-leaning experiments,<br />
but he also culls pieces by Malian<br />
singer Oumou Sangare, Argentinean-Swedish<br />
singer-songwriter José González and a Björk<br />
song from her role in Lars von Trier’s film<br />
Dancer In The Dark.<br />
Strickland’s versions are in a sense more<br />
pop-oriented than the originals— in the best<br />
sense, of making a direct emotional connection.<br />
On Björk’s “Scatterheart,” in particular,<br />
he strips away the dramatics and the Icelandic<br />
singer’s penchant for labyrinthine melodic filigrees<br />
and uncovers the soulful desperation<br />
buried within.<br />
Strikingly, the leader’s own originals are<br />
just as memorable, and tailor-made for his<br />
tightly attuned trio. That communication is so<br />
empathic between Strickland and his drummer,<br />
identical twin E.J., is hardly surprising,<br />
but bassist Ben Williams is consistently an<br />
equal partner without the benefit of genetics.<br />
Throughout the album, the trio maintains a<br />
sound both sparse and rich, with a relaxed<br />
ease that allows for experimentation but without<br />
the airiness ever feeling empty.<br />
The threesome’s effortless teamwork is<br />
embodied on “Rebirth,” the leader’s plangent<br />
ballad. Marcus’ tenor is both keening and<br />
steely, E.J.’s brushwork a hushed whisper,<br />
while Williams provides an insistent but unintrusive<br />
throb. The combined effect is one of<br />
tenderness charged with an undercurrent of<br />
urgent passion, the blood pulsing in one’s temple<br />
at a moment of quiet intimacy.<br />
—Shaun Brady<br />
Idiosyncrasies: Cuspy’s Delight; Rebirth; Scatterheart; The<br />
Child; Middleman; She’s Alive; Portrait Of Tracy; Set Free;<br />
You’ve Got It Bad Girl; Ne Be Fe; Time To Send Someone<br />
Away. (60:14)<br />
Personnel: Marcus Strickland, soprano and tenor saxophones,<br />
clarinet (4); Ben Williams, bass; E.J. Strickland, drums.<br />
»<br />
Ordering info: strickmuzik.com<br />
58 DOWNBEAT November 2009
JAZZ<br />
by James Hale<br />
Time Keepers<br />
Wait For No One<br />
Alvin Queen:<br />
a joyful sizzle<br />
A bouncy take of an Isley Brothers<br />
classic—with a rougher-than-usual<br />
Kirk Whalum on tenor—signals<br />
drummer Carl Allen and bassist<br />
Rodney Whitaker’s intent to<br />
explore pop songs with a spiritual<br />
core. Work To Do (Mack Avenue<br />
1045; 64:02) AAA runs the gamut<br />
from just bass and Rodney Jones’<br />
guitar for Johnny Mandel’s “A<br />
Time For Love” to a nonet for two<br />
tracks, including a brassy interpretation<br />
of Marvin Gaye’s “What’s<br />
Going On.” Unfortunately, Diego<br />
Rivera’s busy arrangements of the<br />
latter and “Eleanor Rigby,” which<br />
he pushes through numerous<br />
tempo changes a la Buddy Rich,<br />
make the recording seem bloated<br />
through its mid-section.<br />
Ordering info: mackavenue.com<br />
Until his death in August, drummer<br />
Rashied Ali maintained subtle<br />
control over his estimable power.<br />
Renowned for his dialogue with John<br />
Coltrane on Interstellar Space, Ali was<br />
never content to coast on his mid-’60s<br />
accomplishments. While Live In Europe<br />
(Survival 126; 67:25) AAAA highlights the<br />
Coltrane-inspired tenor work of Lawrence<br />
Clark, the quintet also includes incisive<br />
trumpeter Josh Evans and fluid bassist<br />
Joris Teepe, and builds its Finnish set<br />
around two James Blood Ulmer compositions.<br />
The Ulmer themes provide effective<br />
fuel for free-flowing extrapolation, while<br />
Clark’s mid-tempo “Lourana” allows Ali to<br />
demonstrate that he was much more than<br />
a crash-and-bash accompanist.<br />
Ordering info: rashiedali.org<br />
Crisp articulation and brisk asides are the<br />
signatures of journeyman Louis Hayes, and<br />
both are prominently on display on The<br />
Time Keeper (18th & Vine 1058; 50:48)<br />
AAA 1 /2. Featuring veteran hard bop saxophonist<br />
Abraham Burton and—on four of<br />
the nine tracks—vibist Steve Nelson, the<br />
one-day session cruises through a number<br />
of pleasant-but-predictable performances<br />
before hitting its peak with a lively interpretation<br />
of Jobim’s “Double Rainbow.” While<br />
The Time Keeper is lacking in sustained<br />
creative fire, the recording of Hayes’ drums<br />
is exemplary, highlighting his martini-dry<br />
cymbals.<br />
Ordering info: 18thandvinejazz.com<br />
With its sly reference to Columbus,<br />
Ohio’s highly vocal audiences, Long Street<br />
Charm (Sound Judgment 103; 66:03) AAA<br />
is drummer Tony Martucci’s tribute to the<br />
organ combos of his youth. It’s a frequent<br />
move by those who came of age on the<br />
bandstands of working-class bars in the<br />
1970s, but Martucci raises it above a pedestrian<br />
nostalgia exercise through his selection<br />
of organist Bill Heid, saxophonist Lyle<br />
Link and guitarist Geoff Reecer. While their<br />
program focuses on favorites from the<br />
period—including “Wives And Lovers,”<br />
Coltrane’s “Lonnie’s Lament” and Grant<br />
Green’s “Green Jeans”—the quartet<br />
attacks each song with vigor, as if anticipating<br />
jeers from the tough Columbus crowd.<br />
Ordering info: dcjazz.com/tonymartucci<br />
Longtime American expatriate Alvin<br />
Queen plays with a snap and sizzle that<br />
make Mighty Long Way (Justin Time 8549;<br />
65:52) AAAA a joyful celebration from<br />
start to finish. Art Blakey is an obvious<br />
influence, and Queen’s septet—highlighting<br />
trumpeter Terell Stafford and organist<br />
Mike LeDonne—burns through Wayne<br />
Shorter’s “United” and transforms Oscar<br />
Peterson’s “Backyard Blues” into the type<br />
of soulful march that the Jazz Messengers<br />
perfected. Peterson—Queen’s steady<br />
employer for the last three years of the<br />
pianist’s life—also contributes the spirited<br />
“Sushi,” which gives alto saxophonist<br />
Jesse Davis the opportunity to shine. DB<br />
Ordering info: justin-time.com<br />
DL MEDIA<br />
November 2009 DOWNBEAT 59
Rob Ickes<br />
Road Song<br />
RESO-REVOLUTION 05335<br />
AAA 1 /2<br />
Don’t think for an<br />
instant that acclaimed<br />
bluegrass dobro player<br />
Rob Ickes’ new<br />
jazz album Road Song is an exercise in cornpone<br />
fun. It’s serious jazz artistry for the<br />
Nashville resident. Back in 1999, Ickes’ album<br />
Slide City began his studio investigations of jazz,<br />
and then he went on to seal the deal with 2002’s<br />
What It Is, alongside Bay Area-based saxophonist-bassoonist<br />
Paul Hanson and a jazz rhythm<br />
section. Actually, it’s no rare thing for top members<br />
of the country community to be comfortable<br />
in a jazz mode. Consider, for starters, David<br />
Grisman, Tony Rice, Bela Fleck, Chris Thile,<br />
Matt Flinner and Doug Jernigan.<br />
What’s unexpected about Ickes’ new release<br />
is his decision to perform only with a pianist.<br />
With taste and spirit, he and his neighbor<br />
Michael Alvey acquit themselves well on mostly<br />
jazz evergreens. Ickes is a virtuoso. Using<br />
tempo and space wisely, and resisting the dense,<br />
ceaseless propulsion of bluegrass, he displays<br />
shadings and timbres to express feeling. A complex<br />
mix of mellifluous joy and bluesy ambivalence<br />
exists in his interpretation of the Wes<br />
Montgomery title song. One might think<br />
“Caravan” and “Take The ‘A’ Train” are tough<br />
songs in which to find new wrinkles of<br />
delight or enchantment, but Ickes succeeds<br />
behind his keen sense of melody<br />
and his solo flights of surprising discovery.<br />
However, “Song For My Father”<br />
finds him flying low with clipped creative<br />
wings, just too adoring of the<br />
famous melody.<br />
Ickes’ dobro on Oscar Peterson’s<br />
“Hymn To Freedom” has a special stateliness<br />
about it, and the melancholic tones he inserts<br />
into “I Can’t Make You Love Me” (a song associated<br />
with Bonnie Raitt) are a good bet to linger<br />
with the listener long after the music ceases.<br />
Several spots on the album have Ickes close to<br />
the intimacy that Jim Hall achieved in the studio<br />
company of Bill Evans in the early ’60s. His<br />
work is such a fresh-sounding tonic that it’s disappointing<br />
whenever he backs off and capable<br />
pianist Alvey takes over.<br />
Unfortunately, Ickes erred in asking<br />
Robinella to sing on an updating of the Hank<br />
Williams classic “You Win Again” and two<br />
more songs. She’s the epitome of vocal blandness—void<br />
of any nuances of phrasing and<br />
texture.<br />
—Frank-John Hadley<br />
Road Song: Song For My Father; Caravan; You Win Again; Road<br />
Song; If I Had You; I Can’t Make You Love Me; West Coast<br />
Blues; The Nearness Of You; Take The “A” Train; Hymn To<br />
Freedom. (51:18)<br />
Personnel: Rob Ickes, dobro, Scheerhorn acoustic slide guitar (3,<br />
5); Michael Alvey, piano; Robinella, vocals (3, 5, 8).<br />
»<br />
Ordering info: resorevolution.com<br />
SUBSCRIBE!<br />
877-904-JAZZ<br />
Mike Stern<br />
Big Neighborhood<br />
HEADS UP 3157<br />
AAAA<br />
Mike Stern is no<br />
stranger to artful<br />
collaborations. He<br />
regularly welcomes<br />
special guests during<br />
his semi-regular<br />
gigs at 55 Bar in New York’s West Village, connected<br />
with fellow six-string heavyweights John<br />
McLaughlin and Bill Frisell a decade ago for<br />
Play and was joined by an impressive lineup of<br />
musicians in 2006 for Who Let The Cats Out<br />
Stern again wields his fluid, inspired fretwork in<br />
a roomful of high-profile players for the satisfying<br />
Big Neighborhood.<br />
The musical environs here indeed are<br />
roomy, and eclectic, starting with a one-two<br />
punch—rock-hard slamdowns with Steve Vai<br />
and Eric Johnson on the title track and “6th<br />
Street,” respectively. Contrast those barnburners<br />
with the closer—a jaunty, Monk-ish blues tune,<br />
“Hope You Don’t Mind,” featuring Randy<br />
Brecker’s incisive trumpet solo—and the<br />
speedy, starting-stopping bebop piece “Coupe<br />
De Ville,” built on the changes to “There Is No<br />
Greater Love,” with superb young bassist<br />
Esperanza Spalding.<br />
The rangy program also includes two<br />
other tunes pairing Spalding’s playing and<br />
singing with Terri Lyne Carrington’s<br />
smart and hearty drumming: the mellow,<br />
lilting “Song For Pepper” and the exceedingly<br />
pretty ballad “Bird Blue.” Medeski<br />
Martin and Wood drive the retro soulfunk<br />
grooves hard on “That’s All It Is”<br />
and anchor the stair-stepping slow jam of<br />
“Check One.” Bassist Richard Bona, a<br />
frequent Stern collaborator, steers the West<br />
Africa-to-fusion rhythms of “Reach,” while<br />
Middle Eastern textures flavor “Moroccan<br />
Roll,” featuring Vai on sitar guitar, and a ferocious<br />
duel with Stern. Jazz, fusion, blues, heavy<br />
rock, world music—Stern is as agile and adaptive<br />
as he is creative. —Philip Booth<br />
Big Neighborhood: Big Neighborhood; 6th Street; Reach;<br />
Song For Pepper; Coupe De Ville; Bird Blue; Moroccan Roll;<br />
Long Time Gone; Check One; That’s All It Is; Hope You Don’t<br />
Mind. (69:55)<br />
Personnel: Mike Stern, Steve Vai (1, 7), Eric Johnson (2, 8), guitar;<br />
Lincoln Goines (1, 2, 7, 8), Richard Bona (3), Esperanza<br />
Spalding (4, 5, 6), Chris Minh Doky (11), bass; Dave Weckl (1, 3,<br />
7), Lionel Cordew (2, 8), Terri Lyne Carrington (4, 5, 6), Cindy<br />
Blackman (11), drums; Jim Beard (1–8, 11), piano, organ, keyboards;<br />
Bob Franceschini (3), Bob Malach (5, 9, 10), saxophone;<br />
Randy Brecker (11), trumpet; John Medeski (9, 10), organ, electric<br />
piano, clavinet; Billy Martin (9, 10), drums; Chris Wood (9,<br />
10), bass; Bona (3), Spalding (4–6), vocals.<br />
»<br />
Ordering info: headsup.com<br />
60 DOWNBEAT November 2009
Fred Hersch<br />
Fred Hersch Plays Jobim<br />
SUNNYSIDE 1223<br />
AAAA<br />
Fred Hersch Plays Jobim extends one of the<br />
most engaging series of solo piano recordings<br />
going. As lyrical a player as Hersch is, you<br />
never ease into his efforts the way you do with other pianists —or at least<br />
you never have the luxury of thinking you know what’s coming. Cerebral<br />
but open-spirited, he’s always finding personal ways to revoice familiar<br />
songs, be they Thelonious Monk masterworks or Rodgers and<br />
Hammerstein standards. Here, he serves an overlooked side of Antonio<br />
Carlos Jobim’s genius by playing down the melodies and playing up the<br />
harmonic possibilities, all the while adding special emotional weight.<br />
The early emerging masterpiece is “O Grande Amor.” An episodic<br />
wonder, the performance captures the different dimensions of love by<br />
moving through buoyant contrupuntal lines, high-stepping phrases, an elegant<br />
classical-style interlude and dark harmonies that suggest shifting tectonic<br />
plates without the fault lines. On “Insensatez,” Hersch plays with<br />
such clarity and graceful concision, he creates the feeling of words being<br />
set down in a letter—one knowingly stamped with saudade.<br />
Throughout Fred Hersch Plays Jobim, we’re aware of a wider musical<br />
world, whether the pianist is invoking Michel Legrand’s “I Will Wait For<br />
You” on “Insensatez” or flying down to Rio on “Brigas Nunca Mais”<br />
with the spirit of Fred Astaire in tow.<br />
—Lloyd Sachs<br />
Fred Hersch Plays Jobim: Por Toda Minha Vida; O Grande Amor; Luiza; Meditaçao; Insensatez;<br />
Brigas Nunca Mais; Modinha/Olha Maria; Desafinado; Corcovado. (50:17)<br />
Personnel: Fred Hersch, piano; Jamey Haddad, percussion (6).<br />
»<br />
Ordering info: sunnysiderecords.com<br />
Tiempo Libre<br />
Bach In Havana<br />
SONY MASTERWORKS 88697-44701<br />
AA 1 /2<br />
Tiempo Libre has an interesting<br />
back story. The group led<br />
a double life in their native<br />
Havana, studying classical<br />
music at Cuba’s Russianstyle<br />
conservatory La ENA<br />
by day and by night playing<br />
fiery timba and Latin jazz as well as rumba and in tambores—music<br />
prohibited at La ENA because of its Afro-Cuban roots. Unfortunately,<br />
Bach In Havana is closer to the music of a Sunday morning cathedral<br />
than a Saturday evening tambores session.<br />
Forcing a hot-blooded Cuban group to submerge its talents under the<br />
weight of a deadening, often silly Bach-infused approach is enough to<br />
make you long for Barry Manilow. And it’s a shame, as Tiempo Libre is<br />
a brilliant group, particularly bassist Tebelio “Tony” Fonte, trumpeter<br />
Cristobal Ferrer Garcia and percussionist Hilario Bell. All too often, just<br />
as they are beginning to burn, as in “Olas De Yemaya” (based on C<br />
Major Prelude, The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1), a trite Bach-styled<br />
piano melody will waylay the group like a wet blanket. —Ken Micallef<br />
Bach In Havana: Tu Conga Bach, Fuga, Air On A G String, Clave In C Minor, Gavotte, Mi Orisha,<br />
Minuet In G, Olas De Yemaya, Baqueteo Con Bajo, Timbach, Kyrie. (47:52)<br />
Personnel: Jorge Gomez, keyboards, vocals; Joaquin “El Kid” Diaz, lead vocal; Leandro Gonzalez,<br />
congas; Tebelio “Tony” Fonte, bass; Cristobal Ferrer Garcia, trumpet; Hilario Bell, percussion; timbales;<br />
Luis “Rosca” Beltran Castillo, tenor saxophone; Paquito D’Rivera, alto saxophone, clarinet;<br />
Yosvany Terry, alto saxophone.<br />
»<br />
Ordering info: sonymasterworks.com<br />
November 2009 DOWNBEAT 61
John Surman<br />
Brewster’s Rooster<br />
ECM 13148<br />
AAA 1 /2<br />
The lilting and playful balancing act that<br />
saxophonist John Surman and guitarist<br />
John Abercrombie engage in here is what<br />
lingers after repeated listens. Certainly,<br />
bassist Drew Gress and drummer Jack DeJohnette are key and essential<br />
members, and their support makes every song lift off. Still, a mournful,<br />
tender song like “Slanted Sky” finds Surman on soprano in a kind of<br />
dialog with Abercrombie’s trademark soft-toned edge, the two of them<br />
singing and playing around the lovely melody.<br />
The course and attitude shift remarkably with “Hilltop Dancer,” a<br />
tune true to its title sporting a bouncy flair. Abercrombie’s edge is, not<br />
surprisingly, more pronounced, even rockish as Surman mans his hefty<br />
baritone, adding to the sense of the dance being one that seemingly<br />
defies gravity. More baritone comes with the uptempo jazz waltz “No<br />
Finesse.” By this point, the listener may have realized that Brewster’s<br />
Rooster is shaping up to be a fairly straightforward jazz album. And a<br />
song like “Kickback” has the advantage of sounding like a classic<br />
Gateway Trio (Abercrombie, DeJohnette and bassist Dave Holland)<br />
song with the bonus of Surman’s hefty delivery, the song a driving vamp<br />
that both swings and rocks.<br />
—John Ephland<br />
Brewster’s Rooster: Slanted Sky; Hilltop Dancer; No Finesse; Kickback; Chelsea Bridge; Haywain;<br />
Counter Measures; Brewter’s Rooster; Going For A Burton. (64:50)<br />
Personnel: John Surman, baritone and soprano saxophones; John Abercrombie, guitar; Drew<br />
Gress, bass; Jack DeJohnette, drums.<br />
»<br />
Ordering info: ecmrecords.com<br />
Akira Sakata &<br />
Chikamorachi<br />
Friendly Pants<br />
FAMILY VINEYARD 66<br />
AAAA<br />
Reedist Akira Sakata has long been one of<br />
the most thrilling figures of Japanese jazz<br />
ever since making a name for himself as a<br />
key member of the Yosuke Yamashita Trio in 1972. His razor-sharp<br />
tone on the alto saxophone brought a dynamic mixture of fiery energy<br />
and deeply soulful lyricism to the group. As a leader in his own right<br />
he’s continued to make high-octane music of uncompromising vigor.<br />
Sadly, he’s remained unknown in the U.S., with most of his work<br />
released only in his homeland and Europe. With the release of Friendly<br />
Pants, his work has been made available for domestic audiences.<br />
He’s been working with the same American musicians for the last<br />
five years or so; Chikamorachi features drummer Chris Corsano and<br />
bassist Darin Gray. Most of the pieces begin with a meditative calm, as<br />
Sakata slowly unfurls tender, bittersweet melodies, with the rhythm<br />
team caressing and pulling at his lines. Yet while “Un” maintains a ballad<br />
feel throughout its 12 minutes, the others typically build in intensity,<br />
with Corsano and Grey stoking the fire with hyper-kinetic movement<br />
and roiling grooves; Sakata pushes from melodic warmth to upper register<br />
cries in long natural arcs, driven by an unstoppable momentum and<br />
clear logic.<br />
—Peter Margasak<br />
Friendly Pants: Friendly Pants; Un; In Case, Let’s Go To Galaxy; That Day of Rain; With Saigyo<br />
Path; Yo! Yo! Dime.<br />
Personnel: Akira Sakata, alto saxophone; Darin Gray, bass; Chris Corsano, drums.<br />
»<br />
Ordering info: scdistribution.com<br />
62 DOWNBEAT November 2009
BLUES<br />
by Frank-John Hadley<br />
Empowerment Now<br />
Christine Santelli: Any Better Time<br />
(VizzTone 388010; 41:35) AAA 1 /2 On her<br />
seventh album, this New Yorker successfully<br />
expands her personal vision of the blues<br />
with several strains of country music,<br />
including Cajun. The grain in Santelli’s voice<br />
lends her singing an edge of earnestness<br />
that fits the appealing tunes she wrote<br />
about giving in to despair (“Down In The<br />
Valley”) and jumping off the “fast track”<br />
(“Lilly’s Song”). Not a blustery guitarist herself,<br />
Santelli calls on Popa Chubby to incinerate<br />
the blues-rock breakout “Ode To Bill.”<br />
Her ambitious “For You” matches the song<br />
character’s emotional health to—surprise—<br />
giddy circus music.<br />
Ordering info: vizztone.com<br />
Candye Kane: Superhero (Delta Groove<br />
133; 55:19) AAA 1 /2 Cancer survivor Kane<br />
brings a huge appetite for life to her first<br />
post-op album. In her typically take-charge<br />
mode, she infuses the original shuffle “Hey!<br />
Toughen Up!” and the Chicago classic<br />
“You Need Love” with an earthshaking<br />
urgency, not far down the scale from where<br />
Koko Taylor made her seismic dent. The<br />
depth of Kane’s formidable tenor gives<br />
credibility to her half-smiling appraisal of<br />
lovesickness in songs like “I Didn’t Listen To<br />
My Heart” (which points to classic New<br />
Orleans r&b). The Californian dynamo<br />
employs good musicians, such as guitarists<br />
Laura Chavez and Kid Ramos.<br />
Ordering info: deltagroovemusic.com<br />
The California Honeydrops: Soul Tub!<br />
(Tub Tone 001; 45:00) AAA Using voices,<br />
guitar, piano, trumpet, saxophone, washboard,<br />
jug, tub bass, drums and percussion,<br />
this quartet (plus studio guests) is getting<br />
noticed beyond their Oakland home base.<br />
The Honeydrops update prewar Chicago<br />
blues, jug band music, early jazz and even<br />
’60s soul music with a welcome crispness<br />
of spirit. The fun of the Memphis soul-stew<br />
title track, featuring broom-and-tub specialist<br />
Nansamba Ssensalo, is contagious—“I<br />
bet you never knew/what a bucket could<br />
do!” The only trouble comes when guitarist-trumpeter<br />
Lech Wierzynski strains too<br />
hard for pained or joyous feeling as the lead<br />
singer.<br />
Ordering info: cahoneydrops.com<br />
Ana Popovic: Blind For Love (Eclecto<br />
Groove 507; 45:01) A 1 /2 Popovic’s treatments<br />
of blues, soul and funk here are impossibly<br />
routine. Clichés infest her songwriting and,<br />
despite her best intentions, affectation<br />
creeps into her vocals and guitar work.<br />
Moreover, the West Coast pros hired to<br />
Candye Kane:<br />
take-charge<br />
tenor<br />
back this Yugoslavia-born entertainer operate<br />
on automatic pilot.<br />
Ordering info: eclectogroove.com<br />
Fiona Boyes: Blues Woman (Yellow Dog<br />
1653; 52:09) AAA 1 /2 In Austin to make her<br />
fifth feature record, this vocalist-guitarist<br />
takes a strong and exhilarating approach to<br />
putting over 13 original tunes and one<br />
apiece from her blues-history hero J. B.<br />
Lenoir (“I Want To Go,” reconditioned as an<br />
acoustic boogie) and a harp player back<br />
home in Australia named Chris Wilson (the<br />
shuffle “Look Out Love!”). What places her<br />
among the leading blues artists today is her<br />
easeful control of vocal shadings, from<br />
burlap-coarse textures to high register<br />
flights, for the expression of assorted feelings—sultry,<br />
rebellious, anguished, joyous.<br />
Trusty accompanists include pianist Marcia<br />
Ball and multi-instrumentalist/producer<br />
Mark Kazanoff.<br />
Ordering info: yellowrecords.com<br />
Joanne Shaw Taylor: White Sugar (Ruf<br />
1147; 51:44) AA This up-and-coming<br />
English blues woman fronting a trio in wellknown<br />
producer Jim Gaines’s studio is<br />
afflicted with pyrotechnic guitar tendencies.<br />
In addition to expression rendered outsized<br />
and exaggerated, she has a light, bleachedout<br />
vocal tone. But there are signs of a<br />
level-headed blues musician behind all the<br />
blustery posturing: the relatively quiet<br />
“Heavy Heart” and “Just Another Word,”<br />
by far the most likeable of nine tunes she<br />
composed.<br />
DB<br />
Ordering info: rufrecords.de<br />
DELTA GROOVE PRODUCTIONS<br />
November 2009 DOWNBEAT 63
Ted Sirota’s Rebel Souls<br />
Seize The Time<br />
NAIM JAZZ 115<br />
AAA 1 /2<br />
Seize The Time Five years passed<br />
between this album and its predecessor,<br />
Breeding Resistance; it could just as easily<br />
have been called Bide Your Time.<br />
But sometimes it takes a while to get things lined up right. Every record by<br />
the Rebel Souls manages to sound different from its predecessors and reaffirm<br />
drummer and bandleader Ted Sirota’s musical and political values.<br />
Viewed from a distance, you could say Sirota’s hoeing the same row;<br />
the song titles draw the same hard line against the abusive powers that be,<br />
the music sketches a more circuitous one that connects bebop with music<br />
of the African diaspora and, in spirit if not sound, punk rock. And he is an<br />
engaging rhythmatist, especially when he lets his Latin side show.<br />
But aside from Sirota and returning multi-reedist Geof Bradfield, this is<br />
a different set of Souls. I miss the last band’s steely power, in particular<br />
trombonist Jeb Bishop. The new second horn, alto saxophonist Greg<br />
Ward, brings American soul and West African pop influences whose softer,<br />
sweeter tones charm and intrigue more than they inspire. New guitarist<br />
Dave Miller indulges a facility with effects that brings a psychedelic<br />
undercurrent to Ward’s “The Keys Of Freedom.” —Bill Meyer<br />
Seize The Time: Clampdown; 13 De Maio; Free Cell Block F, ’Tis Nazi U.S.A.; Hard Times (Come<br />
Again No More); Killa Dilla; Tollway; Viva Max! (Improvised Drum Solo); J.Y.D.; Polo Mze Pt. 1;<br />
Polo Mze Pt. 2; Little D; The Keys To Freedom. (71:38)<br />
Personnel: Geof Bradfield, tenor saxophone, bass clarinet; Greg Ward, alto sax; Dave Miller, guitar;<br />
Jake Vinsel, acoustic and electric bass; Ted Sirota, drums.<br />
»<br />
Ordering info: allegro-music.com<br />
Grant Geissman<br />
Cool Man Cool<br />
FUTURISM 2054<br />
AAAA 1 /2<br />
Angelenos have marveled at guitarist Grant<br />
Geissman’s energizing contributions to the<br />
driving Gordon Goodwin Big Phat band.<br />
Elsewhere, a vague misgiving persists that<br />
Geissman is essentially a smooth jazz guitarist on steroids. If they weren’t<br />
swayed by his excellent straightahead album Say That! (2006), doubters<br />
should be won over by this production. Geissman’s technical proficiency,<br />
fluency in multiple genres and taste mark him as a practicing master.<br />
This is a resume of a smart chameleon with more than a few classic<br />
styles under his fingertips. “Too Cool” is a nice nod to Grant Green’s Blue<br />
Note period, “Chicken Shack” channels Wes Montgomery’s octaves,<br />
“Even If ...” touches Kenny Burrell’s quieter moments. Geissman plays<br />
clean, no matter the genre or the instrument. He articulates clearly on the<br />
Spanish-tinged Corea tribute “Chuck And Chick,” the fast bopper “Some<br />
Sides” and the second line “Nawlins.” The last suffers slightly from a little<br />
too much control.<br />
—Kirk Silsbee<br />
Cool Man Cool: Cool Man Cool; Chicken Shack Jack; Too Cool For School; Chuck And Chick;<br />
Even If…; Dig Some Sides; One For Jerry; Minnie Lights Out; Tiki Time; Nawkins; Crazy Talk; Ya<br />
Think; Mad Skillz; Cool Blooz. (54.20)<br />
Personnel: Grant Geissman, electric guitar; Chuck Mangione, flugelhorn; Tom Scott, tenor saxophone;<br />
Brian Scanlon, flute, soprano, alto and tenor saxes; Emilio Palame, Chick Corea, Tom<br />
Ranier, Patrice Rushen, piano; Russell Ferrante, Fender Rhodes eclectic piano; Jim Cox, Mike<br />
Finnigan, Hammond B3 organ; Jerry Hahn, Chuck Lorre, Dennis C. Brown, guitars; Trey Henry,<br />
bass, tuba; Ray Brinkler, drums; Van Dyke Parks, accordion; Brian Kilgore, Alex Acuña, percussion;<br />
Charlie Bisharat, violin.<br />
»<br />
Ordering info: grantgeissman.com<br />
64 DOWNBEAT November 2009
Edward Simon Trio<br />
Poesía<br />
CAM JAZZ 5032<br />
AAAA<br />
At 40, Venezuelan pianist Edward Simon<br />
hasn’t acquired the kind of name recognition<br />
that many of his contemporaries<br />
enjoy, but on the strength of Poesía that<br />
doesn’t seem fair. Bookended by two slowly unfolding takes of his pretty<br />
“My Love For You,” the album is filled with absorbing piano work,<br />
attractive writing and a rhythm section—bassist John Patitucci and drummer<br />
Brian Blade—that alternately purrs and roars.<br />
The deliberate placement of the two takes of the love song indicate the<br />
care Simon has taken in pacing the album, and two Patitucci compositions<br />
play key roles. “Winter” features a rolling piano lead, beautifully articulated,<br />
and the kind of coiled energy that Wayne Shorter has come to rely on<br />
from Patitucci and Blade. “Roby” opens with meditative, ringing notes<br />
from Simon, and then expands into a dark, quiet ballad.<br />
Patitucci’s tuneful electric work provides sonic contrast on “One For<br />
J.P.,” and a pair of aggressive Simon tunes balances the ballads and<br />
demonstrates the full power of the band. Again, Simon’s pacing pays dividends,<br />
as the choppy “Intention”—with its jagged, five-note bass motif—<br />
gives way to the surging “Triumph.” Best of all is a de-construction of<br />
“Giant Steps” that could only work with a trio with superior harmonic and<br />
rhythmic sense.<br />
—James Hale<br />
Poesía: My Love For You (take 1); Winter; Giant Steps; One For J.P.; Roby; Poesía; Intention;<br />
Triumph; My Love For You (take 2). (54:38)<br />
Personnel: Edward Simon, piano; John Patitucci, bass; Brian Blade, drums.<br />
»<br />
Ordering info: camjazz.com<br />
Diego Barber<br />
Calima<br />
SUNNYSIDE 1210<br />
AA<br />
Calima, the debut album from Flamenco<br />
guitarist Diego Barber, has some nice<br />
moments, but these flashes of brilliance<br />
aren’t enough to carry the album. The<br />
result, a pleasant, but not fully satisfying album, is not from a lack of trying<br />
or talent: Barber’s playing is beautiful, his fingers fly lightly over the<br />
fretboard, and his backing band Fly (saxophonist Mark Turner, bassist<br />
Larry Grenadier and drummer Jeff Ballard) is spot on throughout.<br />
The strongest performances are on tracks, such as “Richi,” that have a<br />
discernable melody and form, providing the listener a steady bearing.<br />
Those that don’t, like the opener, “Piru,” or “Desierto,” which waits over<br />
two minutes before giving anything to grasp onto, tend to float aimlessly.<br />
These pieces create a wonderful sense of atmosphere, but not much else.<br />
“Catalpa” and “Virgianna,” both featuring a burning Turner, are Calima’s<br />
tightest and best executed tracks. Barber shreds on “Catalpa,” but the<br />
sound of his acoustic guitar doesn’t match Ballard’s driving beats.<br />
The final track, “Air,” represents the album as a whole, in that it lacks a<br />
general focus, purpose or direction. During its 20 minutes it shifts from<br />
virtuosic solo flamenco flourishes by Barber, to sparse avant-garde explorations,<br />
to a short section featuring the highly melodic Turner.<br />
—Chris Robinson<br />
Calima: Piru; 190 East; Desierto; Catalpa; Lanzarote; Richi; Virgianna; Air. (63:58)<br />
Personnel: Diego Barber, guitar; Mark Turner, tenor saxophone; Larry Grenadier, bass; Jeff<br />
Ballard, drums.<br />
Ordering info: sunnysiderecords.com<br />
»<br />
November 2009 DOWNBEAT 65
Nicole Mitchell’s<br />
Black Earth Strings<br />
Renegades<br />
DELMARK 587<br />
AAA 1 /2<br />
The music that seems to drip<br />
from every pore of Chicago’s<br />
Nicole Mitchell has finally<br />
been making its way to disc<br />
over the last few years, and her impressive<br />
streak of gripping recorded work continues with<br />
the debut album from her Black Earth Strings<br />
ensemble, a spin-off of her Black Earth<br />
Ensemble. Violinist and violist Renee Baker—<br />
an established classical musician whom Mitchell<br />
coaxed into the world of jazz and improvised<br />
music a few years ago—cellist Tomeka Reid<br />
and bassist Josh Abrams (who doubles on the<br />
bass-like Moroccan guimbre on a few tracks), as<br />
well as percussionist Shirazette Tinnin, are all<br />
flexible partners in the flutist’s multi-pronged<br />
endeavor, in which sleepy third stream experiments<br />
plays no part.<br />
Mitchell, the composer, covers lots of territory,<br />
building the springy “Wade” from elements<br />
of the African-American spiritual “Wade In The<br />
Water,” and casting a beautifully meditative<br />
spell of self-determination on “Be My Own<br />
Grace,” where she sings, “I will never, never<br />
again let my destiny be in the<br />
hands of my lover.” While<br />
Mitchell’s lines often take center<br />
stage—and her extensive use of<br />
piccolo and alto flutes puts her<br />
playing in greater relief amid the<br />
strings—the ensemble aspect of<br />
the performances dominates,<br />
with solo passages arriving in<br />
concise, loosey-goosey spurts, a<br />
constant shuffle of foreground and background<br />
activity, elegantly arranged unison passages and<br />
spiky bursts of free improvisation.<br />
With a composer open to exploring as many<br />
sounds and approaches as Mitchell, it’s important<br />
to have a group that keep things grounded,<br />
and despite the range of the pieces here, the<br />
music never feels dilettantish or erratic. Indeed,<br />
by leading several different groups the flutist<br />
seems acutely aware of how to channel those<br />
diverse interests, as she effectively proves here.<br />
—Peter Margasak<br />
Renegades: Crossroads; No Matter What; Ice; Windance;<br />
Renegades; By My Own Grace; What If; Symbology #2A; Wade;<br />
Waterdance; Symbology #1; Mama Found Out; If I Could Have<br />
You The Way I Want You; Symbology #2; Waris Dirie; Aaya’s<br />
Rainbow. (67:57)<br />
Personnel: Nicole Mitchell, flute, alto flute, piccolo flute; Renee<br />
Baker, violin, viola; Tomeka Reid, cello; Josh Abrams, bass, guimbre;<br />
Shirazette Tinnin, drums, percussion.<br />
»<br />
Ordering info: delmark.com<br />
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877-904-JAZZ<br />
Joris Teepe<br />
Big Band<br />
We Take No Prisoners<br />
CHALLENGE RECORDS 73284<br />
AAA<br />
Born in the Netherlands,<br />
bassist/composer Joris<br />
Teepe arrived in New<br />
York in 1992, and has<br />
spent the ensuing decades backing up a who’s<br />
who of mainstream jazz leaders, all while<br />
amassing a considerable discography of his own<br />
featuring the likes of Don Braden, Chris Potter<br />
and Randy Brecker. His first big band outing is<br />
the result of a commission for the North<br />
Netherlands Symphony Orchestra, and the ensuing<br />
material shows the influence of both homes.<br />
Teepe has embraced Americana with a fervor<br />
undiluted by the ironic detachment with<br />
which most natives would feel obligated to filter<br />
their approach. But though the album is chock<br />
full of old school swing, it is refracted slightly<br />
through the bent lens of the New Dutch variety.<br />
The leader never evidences the need to hog<br />
the spotlight on the disc’s six tracks, but there<br />
are hints throughout that this is a bassist’s date.<br />
First are the burly arrangements, which apply<br />
the full weight of the ensemble’s 17 pieces on<br />
bold, steamroller themes. Even the idyllic opening<br />
section of “Peace On Earth” doesn’t trade<br />
power for delicacy, instead moving the horns<br />
with the lumbering grace of shifting glaciers.<br />
There’s also the attention lavished<br />
on low-end compatriots Earl<br />
McIntyre (bass trombone) and Jason<br />
Marshall (baritone sax). Both are<br />
showcased on the title tune, which<br />
begins with a power-walking piano<br />
trio but erupts into big-shouldered<br />
horn cascades, the show of force<br />
which backs up the title’s tough talk.<br />
Teepe is unafraid of carrying the<br />
banner for his influences, from the jaunty, stabbing<br />
Duke Ellington-like lines of opener “Flight<br />
643” to the overtly Charles Mingus-evoking<br />
bass solo that opens “The Princess And The<br />
Monster,” which evolves over its 13 minutes<br />
into a florid dirge.<br />
Most poignant is “Almost Lucky,” which<br />
features the late Rashied Ali, a frequent collaborator<br />
over the years. The rhythm-frontline relationship<br />
is herein reversed so that the horns provide<br />
slabs of monolithic sound, loosing the<br />
drummer to engage in a free-roaming conversation<br />
with Teepe as well as Bruce Arnold’s<br />
atmospheric guitar.<br />
—Shaun Brady<br />
We Take No Prisoners: Flight 643; We Take No Prisoners;<br />
Peace On Earth; Almost Lucky; It Is Peculiar; The Princess And<br />
The Monster. (54:43)<br />
Personnel: Michael Mossman, John Eckert, Vitaly Golovnev,<br />
Josh Evans, trumpets; Noah Bless, Dion Tucker, Stafford<br />
Hunter, Earl McIntyre, trombones; Mark Gross, Craig Bailey,<br />
Don Braden (5, 6), Peter Brainin, Adam Kolker (1–4), Jason<br />
Marshall, reeds; Jon Davis, piano; Bruce Arnold, guitar; Joris<br />
Teepe, bass; Gene Jackson, Rashied Ali (4), drums.<br />
Ordering info: challengerecords.com<br />
»<br />
66 DOWNBEAT November 2009
BEYOND<br />
by Bill Shoemaker<br />
Cornelius Cardew: revolutionary’s buzz<br />
Cardew’s Revolutionary Legacy<br />
For much of his truncated life, Cornelius<br />
Cardew sought to revolutionize the role of<br />
the composer. While an assistant to<br />
Karlheinz Stockhausen in the early ’60s,<br />
Cardew denounced serialism as dictatorial.<br />
From ’63 to ’67, Cardew subverted the composer’s<br />
conventional control mechanisms<br />
with the 193-page graphic score of<br />
“Treatise.” In 1966, Cardew, an adept multiinstrumentalist,<br />
began a five-year membership<br />
in the improvising group AMM, which<br />
reinforced the idea that music was first and<br />
foremost a social activity. This fueled<br />
Cardew’s agenda in the ’70s with the Scratch<br />
Orchestra, which yielded another radical<br />
work, “The Great Learning.” Eventually,<br />
Cardew’s Communist ideology led him to<br />
reject avant-garde music altogether, and he<br />
spent his last years writing mostly saccharine<br />
folk-rock songs for Peoples’ Liberation<br />
Music and other collectives.<br />
Cardew was 45 when a hit-and-run driver<br />
killed him near his London home, which<br />
explains the title of John Tilbury’s 1,026-<br />
page biography, Cornelius Cardew (1936-<br />
1981) a life unfinished (Copula). Tilbury was<br />
an early and constant colleague of<br />
Cardew’s, himself a pianist renowned for<br />
his interpretations of Morton Feldman’s<br />
music and his work with AMM after<br />
Cardew’s death. His proximity to his subject,<br />
however, does not result in hagiography.<br />
Instead, Tilbury presents a warts-andall<br />
account, albeit one overshadowed by a<br />
wealth of precisely stated information and<br />
insight into a period of rapidly evolving<br />
ideas about music. Even as Cardew’s music<br />
was folded into his political activism (he<br />
was arrested just weeks before his death<br />
for disrupting the House of Commons),<br />
Tilbury’s meticulous account makes for an<br />
unlikely page-turner. When Cardew comes<br />
to his abrupt end, Tilbury describes it and<br />
the aftermath with compelling bluntness.<br />
Though its length may be a deterrent, this<br />
is a biography that will prompt further<br />
exploration of Cardew’s music.<br />
Ordering info: matchlessrecordings.com<br />
The 1967 QUaX Ensemble performance<br />
Treatise (Mode 205; 59:29, 67:31) AAA has<br />
appeared as if on cue. Flutist Petr Kotik’s<br />
quintet sounds frequently robust, which<br />
their doubling on various instruments and<br />
noise-producing objects enhances.<br />
However, it is not a provocative result by<br />
contemporary standards, especially the<br />
AMM’s. Although Cardew gave musicians<br />
complete interpretative freedom, it is hard<br />
to imagine him approving of this concert’s<br />
formulated motives, let alone the intrusion<br />
of loungey jazz piano in the second half.<br />
Ordering info: moderecords.com<br />
AMM’s recent albums better serve<br />
Cardew’s revolutionary legacy. So does<br />
Keith Rowe, who left the group in 2004.<br />
Keith Rowe (ErstLive 07; 36:31) AAAA is<br />
exemplary of how Rowe’s solo music incorporates<br />
a disembodied tabletop guitar and<br />
an array of electronics, contact miked<br />
objects and found materials (usually<br />
through radios) to create a stark architecture<br />
one hum, click and buzz at a time. For<br />
this 2008 Tokyo concert, Rowe expanded<br />
his usual palette, employing iPod-delivered<br />
excerpts from recordings of late 17th and<br />
early 18th Century music, creating juxtapositions<br />
that are initially jarring, but are ultimately<br />
reconciled through Rowe’s fastidiousness<br />
to create a strange beauty.<br />
Ordering info: erstwhilerecords.com<br />
The virtues of AMM’s “laminal” method,<br />
where sounds are layered to give an improvisation<br />
its momentum, are fully explicated<br />
on Trinity (Matchless MRCD71; 69:22)<br />
AAAA 1 /2. Tilbury’s impeccable keying and<br />
Prévost’s attack, particularly his cymbal<br />
bowing, constitute a complete music<br />
whose only hazard is that it can render<br />
additional voices extraneous. However,<br />
guest saxophonist John Butcher’s nuanced<br />
use of texture complements the luminous<br />
sparseness the duo creates. Initially,<br />
Butcher slips through the silences; by the<br />
end of the album, he leaves his mark without<br />
upsetting the delicate balance. DB<br />
Ordering info: matchlessrecordings.com<br />
MATCHLESS RECORDINGS
Steve Lehman Octet<br />
Travail, Transformation,<br />
And Flow<br />
PI 30<br />
AAAA 1 /2<br />
Steve Lehman has gotten to the cusp. He<br />
regularly assembles strong small groups,<br />
and continues to hone an edgy computer-enhanced<br />
body of work and hold membership in Fieldwork, one of the<br />
decade’s eminent cooperative ensembles. Still, it’s been eight years since<br />
the alto saxophonist recorded his first date as a leader. For this, Lehman<br />
chose an octet, an unforgiving test of compositional and band leading<br />
skills. He delivers: Travail, Transformation, And Flow is his most persuasive<br />
album to date.<br />
Lehman’s scores are teeming with layers of obstinate long tones and<br />
angular phrases that are constantly being pulled by an undertow of shifting<br />
tonal centers and sharp-elbowed polyrhythms. The effect is frequently<br />
kaleidoscopic in that materials move between foreground and background<br />
to create new ensemble colors. While “Rudreshm” alludes to the hallmarks<br />
of Lehman’s contemporary, Rudresh Mahanthappa, and “Living In<br />
The World Today” has the urban tinge of the GZA original, the pieces<br />
tend to prompt mostly passing comparisons with John Carter and Henry<br />
Threadgill.<br />
—Bill Shoemaker<br />
Travail, Transformation, And Flow: Echoes; Rudreshm; As Things Change (I Remain The<br />
Same); Dub; Alloy; Waves; No Neighborhood Rough Enough; Living In The World Today (GZA<br />
Transcription). (40:17)<br />
Personnel: Steve Lehman, alto saxophone; Mark Shim, tenor saxophone; Jonathan Finlayson, trumpet;<br />
Tim Albright, trombone; Chris Dingman, vibraphone; Jose Davila, tuba; Drew Gress, bass;<br />
Tyshawn Sorey, drums.<br />
Ordering info: pirecordings.com<br />
»<br />
La Excelencia<br />
Mi Tumbao Social<br />
HANDLE WITH CARE 4720<br />
AAAA 1 /2<br />
This five-year-old New York band flies<br />
the flag of salsa dura—hard salsa, the present-day<br />
name for the rootsy, chopsheavy<br />
style that flourished in Latin New<br />
York 35 years ago.<br />
Co-led by conguero José Vázquez-Cofresí and timbalero Julián Silva,<br />
La Excelencia is old-school, evoking the Fania days. Bassist Jorge Bringas<br />
makes the tumbao jump, while Willy Rodríguez locks in on piano without<br />
a drop of synthesizer. The basic point of reference is the now-classic New<br />
York Puerto Rican-dominated style of playing Cuban genres, with a touch<br />
of Colombian flavor, and a consciousness of African traditions.<br />
Though salsa dura is broadly popular in many parts of Latin America,<br />
it has not had corporate support or major media exposure for years, and<br />
this album, an independent production, takes an embattled stance. Mi<br />
Tumbao Social evokes not only ’70s barrio style, but social consciousness.<br />
The music insists the listener dance, but the lyrics insist on pan-Latin<br />
unity, the “tumbao social” of the album’s title. It’s not about getting rich;<br />
it’s a fiesta popular.<br />
—Ned Sublette<br />
Mi Tumbao Social: Salsa Dura; Ahora Que te Tengo Aquí; Deja De Criticar; Por Tu Traición (Salsa<br />
Version); Aña Pa’ Mi Tambor; American Sueño; Duelo De Bongo; Caminando; Vendió Su Corazón;<br />
Unidad; Por Tu Traición (Bolero Version). (46:58)<br />
Personnel: Jorje Bringas, bass; Willy Rodríguez, piano; Charles Dilone, bongo, campana, quinto;<br />
José Vázquez-Cofresí, congas, shekere; Julián Silva, timbales, maracas, tambora, catá; Ronald<br />
Prokopez, Tokunori Kajiwara, Jack Davis, trombones; Sam Hoyt, Jonathan Powell, Willie Oleneck,<br />
trumpets; Edwin Pérez, vocal, coro; Gilberto Velázquez, vocal, coro, güiro.<br />
»<br />
Ordering info: laexcelencia.net
Stefon Harris and<br />
Blackout<br />
Urbanus<br />
CONCORD 31286<br />
AAAA<br />
Eleven years and seven albums<br />
since his 1998 debut, A Cloud<br />
Of Red Dust, and vibraphonist<br />
Stefon Harris continues to go<br />
from strength to strength. Some<br />
criticize the 35-year-old for not<br />
adhering to strict jazz tradition, but rigidity is far from this musician’s bag.<br />
Accompanied by his equally inspired group, Blackout, Harris brings<br />
plush r&b, high-flying improvisation, Vocodered vocals and conspicuous<br />
Stevie Wonder lust to Urbanus’ 10 tracks. A cover of Wonder’s “They<br />
Won’t Go (When I Go)” churns with ominous reeds, Marc Cary’s aromatic<br />
Rhodes and Casey Benjamin’s alien Vocoder syllables, but really,<br />
Wonder’s spirit of experimentation, lush melodic style and soulful strutting<br />
suffuse Urbanus. “Christina” recalls an ethereal “If You Really Love<br />
Me,” and “For You” is a sweetly stoned take on “My Cherie Amour.”<br />
Of course, Harris and Blackout still burn, as in drummer Terreon<br />
Gully’s certifiably schizoid “Tanktified,” the cubist bop of “Shake It For<br />
Me” and Cary’s superbly adroit “The Afterthought.” On an edgy version<br />
of Jackie McLean’s “Minor March,” Harris bringing his big guns to bear<br />
in his solo, expressing McLean’s sideways charm with beautiful tonal<br />
shadings. “Minor March” climaxes with a manic Gully solo, as if Billy<br />
Higgins was captured by little green men and shot through with 32nd<br />
notes.<br />
—Ken Micallef<br />
Urbanus: Gone; Christina; Tanktified; Shake It For Me; Minor March; They Won’t Go (When I<br />
Go); The Afterthought; For You; Blues For Denial; Langston’s Lullaby. (55:25)<br />
Personnel: Stefon Harris, vibraphone, marimba; Marc Cary, Fender Rhodes, keyboards; Ben Williams,<br />
bass; Terreon Gully, drums; Casey Benjamin, alto sax; Y.C. Laws, percussion; Anna Webber, flute;<br />
Anne Drummond, alto flute; Mark Vinci, Sam Ryder, clarinet; Jay Rattman, bass clarinet.<br />
Ordering info: concordmusicgroup.com<br />
»<br />
Pedro Giraudo<br />
Jazz Orchestra<br />
El Viaje<br />
PGM 020579<br />
AAA<br />
Fierce machismo and circular chord patterns<br />
reign repeatedly in Argentine bassist<br />
Pedro Giraudo’s brooding, bombastic<br />
writings for big band, but he leavens the<br />
dough with occasional spurts of upper reed lines and zesty wah-wah<br />
trumpet on “El Bajonazo” and “Yarulina.” The title piece, a four-movement<br />
suite, builds from piano droning a slow tango and soon hews out<br />
rough-and-tumble brass voicings and swirling sax glissandi over fluid<br />
bass lines and accelerating section work.<br />
Giraudo democratically distributes horns solos throughout to his<br />
rugged individualists—Mike Fahie’s trombone, Carl Maraghi’s bari,<br />
Luke Batson’s tenor, Jon Howell’s trumpet. The staunchly programmatic<br />
show-stopper “Nachgeschmack” sets up a rolling gait for pampas riding,<br />
complete with tremolos, rimshots, piano ostinato and a wild-west trumpet<br />
echo. “Punto De Partida” offers more of the same, with jittery accents, a<br />
phrase from Cole Porter’s “So In Love,” trombones like Nepalese radhung<br />
horns, nervous solos by trombonist Ryan Keberle and altoist Todd<br />
Bashore.<br />
—Fred Bouchard<br />
El Viaje: El Bajonazo; El Viaje (I; II; III; IV); Yarulina; Nachgeschmack; Punto De Partida; Hiroshima. (51:20)<br />
Personnel: Pedro Giraudo, bass, arranger/composer; Will Vinson, Todd Bashore, Luke Benson, Carl<br />
Maraghi, Alejandro Aviles (1, 6), reeds; Jonathan Powell, Tatum Greenblatt, trumpets; Ryan Keberle,<br />
Mike Fahie, trombones; Jess Jurkovitz, piano; Jeff Davis, drums; Tony De Vivo, cajon, guiro.<br />
Ordering info: pedrogiraudo.com<br />
»<br />
November 2009 DOWNBEAT 69
Ralph Alessi and<br />
Modular Theatre<br />
Open Season<br />
RKM MUSIC 1146<br />
AAA<br />
SUBSCRIBE! 877-904-JAZZ<br />
DOWNBEAT.COM<br />
There are few more effective ways to mar an<br />
otherwise excellent album than with inconsequential<br />
texts blathered throughout the proceedings.<br />
Unfortunately, Ralph Alessi is developing<br />
a bit of a track record in doing just that, albeit<br />
one that took almost a decade to establish. The<br />
perpetrator on the gifted trumpeter-composer’s<br />
first Modular Theatre album, Hissy Fit from<br />
1999 was Carl “Kokayi” Walker; for five tracks<br />
on Open Season, Alessi has turned to Will<br />
Jennings, whose disaffected monotone fits the<br />
uncredited riffs about subjects spanning<br />
Kabbalism and security cameras to a deconstructed<br />
T.<br />
However, the redeeming failure of Jennings’<br />
contributions is that they don’t nullify the merits<br />
of Alessi’s compositions and the strong performances<br />
by the leader, Peter Epstein and the two<br />
platooned rhythm sections. As a composer,<br />
Alessi easily melds seeming opposites, like the<br />
bubbling rhythms and the razor sharp lines of<br />
“Morbid Curiosity” and the gentle float and<br />
quirky thematic twists of “Slow Freefall.” His<br />
playing is thoroughly engaging; he has one of<br />
the most wide-ranging palettes in jazz and his<br />
solos have plenty of spark and soul, qualities that<br />
Epstein has in comparable proportions, making<br />
them a perfectly matched front line. And, repeated<br />
reference to the personnel listings is sufficient<br />
endorsement of Ben Street and Mark Ferber,<br />
given that the bass and drums are manned on<br />
four tracks by Mark Helias and Gerald Cleaver.<br />
With a more compelling voice and texts,<br />
Alessi could carve out a significant niche for this<br />
aspect of his work. As it stands, it is something<br />
of a drag on his well-earned reputation as a brilliant<br />
trumpeter and a savvy composer.<br />
—Bill Shoemaker<br />
Open Season: Connecting Dots; Morbid Curiosity; Good Fever;<br />
Panoramic; Video; Slow Freefall; Tranesonic; Foxhole;<br />
Conversations With A Circus Midget; Fear Of Fruit; Connecting<br />
Dots Pt. 2. (52:48)<br />
Personnel: Ralph Alessi, trumpet; Peter Epstein, saxophones;<br />
Ben Street, Mark Helias bass; Mark Ferber, Gerald Cleaver<br />
drums; Will Jennings, William Coltrane, voice.<br />
»<br />
Ordering info: rkmmusic.com<br />
70 DOWNBEAT November 2009
HISTORICAL<br />
Armstrong’s<br />
Virtuosity Peerless<br />
Then, Valuable Now<br />
No corpus of jazz recordings carries<br />
greater influence than the 169 tracks that<br />
make-up The Complete Louis Armstrong<br />
Decca Sessions (1935-1946) (Mosaic<br />
MD7-243, 74:17/77:43/65:17/64:15/68:04/<br />
77:08/69:36) AAAAA, documenting the<br />
maestro at the peak of his powers, when<br />
vigor and maturity equally coexisted.<br />
From the first track (“I’m In The Mood For<br />
Love”) through the last (“Frim Fram<br />
Sauce”), Armstrong delivers the goods<br />
with extraordinary consistency.<br />
During the years leading up to World<br />
War Two, Armstrong was an international<br />
star, and these sessions showcase him as a<br />
virtuoso of the trumpet and a charismatic<br />
entertainer without peer. In the matter of<br />
notes and tones, he plays with unparalleled<br />
levels of imagination, technique and conceptual<br />
sophistication. As Miles Davis stated<br />
in a remark cited towards the end of the<br />
booklet essay, Armstrong foreshadowed<br />
every vocabulary development that would<br />
transpire on his instrument.<br />
Vocally, Armstrong addresses repertoire<br />
that runs the gamut of Swing Era concerns—classics<br />
and trifles from Tin Pan<br />
Alley and Broadway (47 are the work of<br />
major American Songbook composers);<br />
“Mexican” and “Hawaiian” exotica and<br />
other novelty numbers; some 20 New<br />
Orleans and Chicago classics from<br />
Armstrong’s own canon; a suite of spirituals;<br />
collaborations with the Mills Brothers,<br />
Sidney Bechet, Jimmy Dorsey, the Casa<br />
Loma Orchestra; and a spoken word<br />
homage to Bert Williams. He unfailingly<br />
sells each lyric, execrable or sublime, as<br />
though his life depended on it, shaping the<br />
syllables and articulating the words with<br />
deep soul. The proceedings serve as a<br />
reminder, if one is needed, that Armstrong<br />
is the source of of Bing Crosby, Frank<br />
Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday<br />
(compare the Armstrong and Holiday versions<br />
of “You’re A Lucky Guy” and “You’re<br />
A No-Account,” recorded within five days<br />
of each other in December 1939).<br />
On the other side of this coin,<br />
Armstrong’s producers, true to the cultural<br />
mores of segregation, assigned him a number<br />
of songs with a highly racialized, sometimes<br />
antebellum orientation—“Shoe Shine<br />
Boy,” “Carry Me Back To Old Virginny,”<br />
“The Old Folks At Home,” “Shanty Town<br />
on the Old Mississippi.” That Armstrong,<br />
Louis Armstrong: maestro’s peak<br />
by Ted Panken<br />
ever smiling, projected equally vigorous<br />
levels of mojo on “that’s where I labored so<br />
hard for old master, day after day in the<br />
fields of yellow corn” as to, say, “Jeepers<br />
Creepers,” “Ev’ntide” and “Solitude,” was<br />
increasingly problematic for a consequential<br />
percentage of his African American<br />
audience, especially after World War Two.<br />
As the popular culture soundtrack transitioned<br />
to r&b and rock ’n’ roll, and as jazz<br />
expression became increasingly complex<br />
and political in the ’60s and ’70s, younger<br />
listeners increasingly tuned out Armstrong<br />
as a figure who seemed as mainstream as<br />
mom and apple pie.<br />
Which perhaps is why such classics as<br />
“You Are My Lucky Star,” “Struttin’ With<br />
Some Barbecue,” “Lyin’ to Myself,”<br />
“Swing That Music,” “Poor Old Joe,”<br />
“Jubilee” and “Wolverine Blues” are less<br />
well-known than they ought to be among<br />
today’s serious jazz folks who are not hardcore<br />
Armstrong fans. Few of the latter will<br />
possess a copy of Armstrong’s privately<br />
recorded “Happy Birthday” for Crosby,<br />
which is a small part of the value-added<br />
that ranks this set as a must-buy for all<br />
comers. One reason is the sound—Andreas<br />
Meyer is to be commended for the quality<br />
of his transfers and remasterings. Another<br />
is the booklet, filled with rare photos that<br />
complement the profound, exhaustive<br />
annotation, at once essay, meditation and<br />
memoir, by life-long Pops-lover Dan<br />
Morgenstern.<br />
DB<br />
Ordering info: mosaicrecords.com<br />
DOWNBEAT ARCHIVES<br />
November 2009 DOWNBEAT 71
Steven Hashimoto’s<br />
Mothra<br />
Tradewind<br />
CHICAGO SESSIONS 01V03<br />
AA<br />
Electric bass player Steven<br />
Hashimoto has been on the<br />
Chicago scene for more than 30<br />
years and done about everything.<br />
His latest crop of tunes summarizes<br />
fairly fittingly what he has accomplished thus far. Surrounded by<br />
another Windy City veteran, vibes player Kathy Kelly, and some younger<br />
guns, most notably versatile guitarist Neal Alger, he mostly plays it safe.<br />
This is frustrating because Hashimoto does have plenty of qualities. He<br />
uses humor sparingly and always in appropriate situations as the delightfully<br />
boppish “Control Freak” can testify. The leader is also at his most<br />
effective when writing vamp-based compositions. The witty “Woikin’<br />
Wit’ Mr. Poikins” with his insistent beats or the darker title track are prime<br />
examples. Both give an opportunity to Dan Hesler to explore the less<br />
syrupy side of his soprano while the latter, hued by Michael Levin’s bass<br />
clarinet, expands the sonic palette of the album. Eventually, it is a shame<br />
that Tradewind does not contain more material in that vein.<br />
As drummer Heath Chappell’s too sporadic explosive bursts suggest, it<br />
is as if Hashimoto is reluctant to take more chances. —Alain Drouot<br />
Tradewind: Eloise; Now You Know; Haiku; Woikin’ Wit’ Mr. Poikins; Tradewind; Happenstance;<br />
Farewell To Manzanar; Control Freak; Samsara; Barely Blue; Musahi’s Song. (72:45)<br />
Personnel: Steven Hashimoto, electric bass; Kathy Kelly, vibes; Neal Alger, guitar; Dan Hesler,<br />
tenor, alto, soprano saxophones; Michael Levin, flute, clarinet, bass clarinet, tenor and soprano saxophones;<br />
Heath Chappell, drums.<br />
»<br />
Ordering info: chicagosessions.com<br />
Crimson Jazz Trio<br />
King Crimson Songbook Volume 2<br />
INNER KNOT 7727<br />
AAA<br />
These guys know their Crimson—<br />
King Crimson, that is. Sensing a jazz<br />
stream running deep down in this classic<br />
prog rock English band, the<br />
Crimson Jazz Trio mines the group’s<br />
oeuvre for all it’s worth.<br />
The Crimson Jazz Trio plays it pretty straight, and yet you have to really<br />
listen to catch some of the lines, if only because to hear a song like<br />
“Pictures Of A City” in such an unlikely setting as an acoustic jazz piano<br />
trio takes some doing. Their second King Crimson outing, Volume 2,<br />
while fairly conventional trio jazz, is touted as more adventurous than the<br />
first. They have the speed and chops to pull it off (“In The Court Of The<br />
Crimson King” is another tour de force), the group consisting of drummer<br />
Ian Wallace (his last date before dying), bassist Tim Landers and pianist<br />
Joey Nardone. A former King Crimson member, saxophonist Mel Collins,<br />
is also on board for two tracks.<br />
The album builds even as it generally softens its tone and attitude.<br />
The introspective “Islands Suite” of five songs and the closing “Lament”<br />
tend more to emphasize musical lyricism and personal expression with<br />
solos, reflecting another side to the Crimson Jazz Trio even as it may<br />
have that casual listener wondering what this King Crimson band was all<br />
about.<br />
—John Ephland<br />
King Crimson Songbook, Volume 2: The Court Of The Crimson King; Pictures Of A City; One<br />
Time; Frame By Frame; Inner Garden; Heartbeat; Islands Suite; Lament.<br />
Personnel: Joey Nardone, piano, vocals; Tim Landers, bass; Mel Collins, saxophone; Ian Wallace, drums.<br />
»<br />
Ordering info: innerknotrecords.com<br />
72 DOWNBEAT November 2009
Aki Takase/Alexander<br />
von Schlippenbach<br />
Iron Wedding – Piano Duets<br />
INTAKT 160<br />
AAA 1 /2<br />
Partners in life, surprisingly pianists Aki<br />
Takase and Alex von Schlippenbach<br />
have not had many opportunities to record<br />
together. This is only their second duo recording.<br />
One could expect a series of blistering<br />
exchanges, and Iron Wedding has its share of<br />
fiery and loud passages. But it also has a lot<br />
more to bring to the table.<br />
The duo’s impressionistic approach evokes<br />
various styles. Thelonious Monk’s shadow<br />
hovers over a few pieces,<br />
but 20th-century classical<br />
piano music is the main<br />
influence. When the<br />
pianists let off steam,<br />
they weave a dense and<br />
dissonant tapestry rather<br />
than revel in lambaste.<br />
Whatever the mood, a real osmosis takes place<br />
over the program, and it can be daunting to<br />
identify Takase or von Schlippenbach. Rather<br />
than entering into a dialogue, they become<br />
involved in interlocking figures or create an<br />
orchestral sound. Hardly any trace of selfindulgence<br />
surfaces; the musicians refrain from<br />
burdening their ruminations with any unnecessary<br />
gestures. Iron Wedding is not as much<br />
about saying something new as about providing<br />
an overview of the many possibilities the<br />
piano offers.<br />
—Alain Drouot<br />
Iron Wedding: Early Light; Circuit; Suite In Five Parts;<br />
Steinblock; Twelve Tone Tales; RTP; Gold Inside; Eight;<br />
Zankapfel; Thrown In; Off Hand; Dwarn’s Late Light; Iron<br />
Wedding; Passacaglia 1, 2, 3; Yui’s Dance; Rain; Far On. (65:20)<br />
Personnel: Aki Takase, Alexander von Schlippenbach, piano.<br />
»<br />
Ordering info: intaktrec.ch<br />
Bill Frisell<br />
Disfarmer<br />
NONESUCH 478524<br />
AAA<br />
Bill Frisell creates<br />
sophisticated country<br />
music on Disfarmer,<br />
a tribute to<br />
the reclusive, self-named photographer whose<br />
Depression-era portraits immortalized the mountain<br />
community of Heber Springs, Ark. The guitarist<br />
works in miniature, while performing<br />
mostly original compositions in a quartet that<br />
features steel guitars, fiddle, bass and mandolin.<br />
True to Disfarmer’s contradictory spirit—contemptuous<br />
of the very folks whom he photographed—Frisell<br />
and company look beyond<br />
the conventions of country music, while preserving<br />
the rustic textures and tonal colors.<br />
The 26 tracks often revisit the same<br />
melodies via different arrangements (and<br />
titles). Many of them recall old-time songs,<br />
briefly stated and performed without the benefit<br />
of solos. “Lonely Man” features austere lyricism<br />
and disonant voicings; by contrast Frisell<br />
picks what could pass for a campfire song on<br />
“Farmer” (sans vocals), and the group transforms<br />
bluesman Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup’s<br />
“That’s Alright, Mama” into a bluegrass romp.<br />
However, “Lost, Night,” “Shutter, Dream” and<br />
“The Wizard” digress from this folksong template<br />
and embrace chamber music, the cryptic<br />
character of the avant-garde. Such compositions<br />
typify Disfarmer himself: thriving on<br />
their individuality, while sometimes suffering<br />
the consequences.<br />
—Eric Fine<br />
Disfarmer: Disfarmer Theme; Lonely Man; Lost, Night; Farmer;<br />
Focus; Peter Miller’s Discovery; That’s Alright, Mama; Little Girl;<br />
Little Boy; No One Gets In; Lovesick Blues; I Can’t Help It (If I’m<br />
Still In Love With You); Shutter, Dream; Exposed; The Wizard;<br />
Think; Drink; Play; I Am Not A Farmer; Small Town; Arkansas<br />
(Part 1); Arkansas (Part 2); Arkansas (Part 3); Lost Again, Dark;<br />
Natural Light; Did You See Him (71:43)<br />
Personnel: Bill Frisell, electric and acoustic guitars, loops, music<br />
boxes; Greg Leisz, steel guitars, mandolin; Jenny Scheinman,<br />
violin; Viktor Krauss, bass.<br />
»<br />
Ordering info: nonesuch.com
BOOKS<br />
Monk’s Life<br />
Thoroughly<br />
Detailed,<br />
Pointedly<br />
Reconsidered<br />
Robin D. G. Kelley, a professor of history,<br />
American Studies and ethnicity at<br />
the University of Southern California,<br />
spent 14 years researching Thelonious<br />
Monk: The Life and Times of an<br />
American Original (Free Press). His<br />
efforts have rewarded readers with the<br />
first definitive biography of this icon.<br />
Thorough to a fault, more detailed<br />
chronicle than compelling narrative,<br />
Kelley’s weighty tome tracks Monk’s<br />
life, literally, month by month, gig by<br />
gig, tune by tune and, eventually, tour<br />
by tour, from his birth in Rocky Mount,<br />
N.C., in 1917 to his death in<br />
Englewood, N.J., in 1982, conjuring as<br />
complete a picture of this complex, original<br />
and enigmatic artist as possible. Kelley had<br />
broad access to Monk’s family papers and<br />
augments this access with relentless scholarship,<br />
ferreting out every article, press<br />
release, album liner note and performance<br />
tape he can lay eyes or ears on, plus interviewing<br />
hundreds of sources, collating<br />
everything into a coherent, three-dimensional<br />
timeline that weaves together personal,<br />
social and musical information.<br />
Starting with Monk’s North Carolina forebears,<br />
Kelley moves on to San Juan Hill,<br />
the rough Manhattan neighborhood where<br />
Monk grew up and lived most of his life;<br />
Monk’s early schooling (grades: 68 in<br />
English; 67 in French); piano lessons with<br />
Alberta Simmons; two years on the road<br />
with a tent revival group (even detective<br />
Kelley found no new traces of that period);<br />
and his early experiences as a leader.<br />
Kelley also delves into Monk’s crucial role<br />
as pianist in the house band at Minton’s,<br />
his public triumph and, finally, his selfimposed<br />
silence.<br />
Kelley attempts to dispel the myth of<br />
Monk as a “mad genius”—the eccentric,<br />
bohemian loner depicted in his press—and<br />
to recontextualize him as a not-so-weird<br />
African American with a profound community<br />
history. Kelley is by and large successful,<br />
though his either-or approach, ironically,<br />
sometimes leads him to ignore his own<br />
evidence. Kelley is content to let stand, for<br />
example, Monk’s lifelong complaint that<br />
Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie unjustly<br />
“got all the credit” for bebop, when it’s<br />
by Paul de Barros<br />
clear from the book that, in terms of recognition,<br />
Monk could be his own worst<br />
enemy—stubborn, belligerent, uncooperative<br />
and something of a diva. Such dissonance<br />
between evidence and authorial<br />
positions becomes a pattern, one of the<br />
more hilarious being that Monk’s reputation<br />
for “unreliability” was unfair, since the<br />
book is a virtual catalog of the pianist’s<br />
habitual transgressions: showing up late (or<br />
not at all), drunk, stoned and/or cantankerous<br />
with his employers and sidemen.<br />
Nevertheless, Kelley does reveal that<br />
despite Monk’s taciturn public eccentricity,<br />
in private, he was a devoted family man<br />
who loved hanging out with his kids at<br />
Christmas and shooting the breeze with<br />
pals and—most interestingly—a committed<br />
community activist who regularly lent his<br />
talents to the Civil Rights movement. This<br />
new view of Monk doesn’t obviate the<br />
media image, but leavens and deepens it.<br />
Less complicated is Kelley’s frank discussion<br />
of Monk’s bipolar condition, which,<br />
along with the medications he was given,<br />
affected his behavior, particularly at the<br />
end, when Lithium seems to have drained<br />
his desire to play.<br />
Thelonious Monk is a judicious book,<br />
with one egregious exception: a scurrilous<br />
attack on Riverside Records producer Orrin<br />
Keepnews, who did not grant Kelley an<br />
interview. Kelley’s prose is workmanlike<br />
and clear, though reading it can be a slog at<br />
times. But, overall, this very welcome book<br />
is certain to be a go-to reference. DB<br />
Ordering info: simonandschuster.com<br />
Nate Wooley/Fred Lonberg-<br />
Holm/Jason Roebke<br />
Throw Down Your Hammer And Sing<br />
PORTER RECORDS 4022<br />
AAA<br />
This album’s title primes one to expect union<br />
organizing anthems, while the accompanying<br />
booklet’s striking photographs of wrecked edifices<br />
decaying by California’s shrinking Salton<br />
Sea impart the message that sooner or later all<br />
human effort will be reduced to splinters and<br />
dust. What does all of that have to do with the<br />
hour of non-idiomatic improvisation preserved<br />
upon this disc More than you might think. The<br />
textual message to do something and do it now<br />
contrasts with images of the impermanence of<br />
human endeavor to create a context that makes<br />
this hermetic music approachable by suggesting<br />
that all concern for history is vanity; only the<br />
presence counts.<br />
Each member of this trio has proved his mettle<br />
in time-based settings, Wooley with Stephen<br />
Gauci’s groups, and Lonberg-Holm and Roebke<br />
in the Valentine Trio. But here they embrace the<br />
immediacy of free improvisation, making music<br />
that refers to nothing outside of the interactions<br />
between the players and seems more keyed to<br />
the impact of sound rather than its strategic<br />
development. From the first downward swoop<br />
of strangulated brass through thicket of rustling,<br />
woody resonance, the players are focused on<br />
each other, downplaying their respective technical<br />
gifts in order to make the music work.<br />
Wooley’s lexicon of squelchy kisses, disconsolate<br />
cries and curved, muted contours is the<br />
antithesis of flash, but it exemplifies a higher<br />
musicality by complementing the strings’ creak<br />
and rumble. Roebke is likewise attentive to<br />
economy and collective impact. While Lonberg-<br />
Holm can play that game as well, his cello’s<br />
train of electronic effects provides a contrasting<br />
voice that lends vividness whenever it sounds.<br />
The music attains such a peak on “Southern<br />
Ends Of The Earth,” where Roebke’s plucking<br />
zigs while the trumpet’s tart utterances zag and<br />
both are illuminated by the bursts of sparking<br />
heat and color issuing from the cellist’s pluggedin<br />
signal path.<br />
—Bill Meyer<br />
Throw Down Your Hammer And Sing: Tacones Altos; Sans<br />
Aluminumius; Southern Ends Of The Earth; Saint Mary;<br />
Anywhere, Anyplace At All. (60:05)<br />
Personnel: Nate Wooley, trumpet; Fred Lonberg-Holm, cello,<br />
electronics; Jason Roebke, bass.<br />
»<br />
Ordering info: porterrecords.com<br />
74 DOWNBEAT November 2009
Trio 3 + Geri<br />
Allen<br />
At This Time<br />
INTAKT 162<br />
AAAA<br />
There’s never been<br />
any doubting the<br />
remarkable talents of pianist Geri Allen, but over<br />
the decades she’s only occasionally realized her<br />
vast potential when she’s leading her own band.<br />
Indeed, many of her finest recordings have<br />
found her either in a collective setting, such as<br />
her brilliant work with bassist Charlie Haden<br />
and drummer Paul Motian, or as a sideperson,<br />
such as with Ornette Coleman. So it’s no surprise<br />
that she’s at her best serving as a guest for<br />
Trio 3—the powerhouse combo of drummer<br />
Andrew Cyrille, reedist Oliver Lake and bassist<br />
Reggie Workman.<br />
Allen has worked with all three members, so<br />
she fits right in on a typically sharp, probing program<br />
that dissolves lines between post-bop and<br />
free jazz. The album opens with her “Swamini,”<br />
a gorgeously meditative homage to Alice<br />
Coltrane that has Lake masterfully evoking John.<br />
She swings jaggedly on a biting reading of Eric<br />
Dolphy’s “Gazzeloni” and on the shuffling<br />
“Lake’s Jump,” a Curtis Clark piece with a sly<br />
“Night In Tunisia” quote on the turnaround of<br />
the opening theme. But Allen has no problem<br />
with abstraction either, dropping dissonant runs<br />
and inside the piano clanking on the freely<br />
improvised “For Patrik L.,” and using the rustling<br />
of sheet music as a device on “Long Melody.”<br />
—Peter Margasak<br />
At This Time: Swamini; Gazzeloni; For Patrick L.; All Net;<br />
Current; Lake’s Jump; Long Melody; Tey; Barbara’s Rainbow; In<br />
The Realm ... Of The Child ... Of True Humanity Within. (60:59)<br />
Personnel: Andrew Cyrille, drums; Reggie Workman, bass;<br />
Oliver Lake, alto saxophone, flute; Geri Allen, piano.<br />
»<br />
Ordering info: intaktrec.ch<br />
Gerald Clayton<br />
Two-Shade<br />
ARTISTSHARE 0088<br />
AAA 1 /2<br />
Two-Shade, the strikingly<br />
confident, decidedly<br />
fresh debut album from Gerald Clayton, is<br />
imbued with a chamber jazz feel, in terms of the<br />
warm, intimate way that he connects with his<br />
regular trio mates, bassist Joe Sanders and drummer<br />
Justin Brown. That doesn’t imply reserve or<br />
politeness, though, as zigzagging rhythms, crisscrossing<br />
lines, unexpected twists and other surprising<br />
patterns fill these dozen tunes—10 of<br />
Clayton’s originals and two standards.<br />
For the latter, the pianist, son of bassist John<br />
Clayton, goes it alone on a limber version of<br />
Dizzy Gillespie’s “Con Alma” and smartly navigates<br />
the speedy swing and intricate moving<br />
parts of an unusual arrangement of Cole Porter’s<br />
“All Of You.” Opening track “Boogablues,”<br />
aptly titled, does a start-stop dance before comfortably<br />
slipping into Crescent City rhythms and<br />
eventually opening up for Sanders’ woody solo<br />
runs. Leapfrogging figures are strewn about in<br />
“Trapped In Dream,” one of several pieces influenced<br />
by classical composers.<br />
Appealing grooves abound throughout,<br />
including on the gospel- and soul-informed<br />
“Love All Around,” the genteel, Latin-tinged<br />
“Sunny Day Go” and the laid-back, bluesy<br />
“Two Heads One Pillow,” which gives the<br />
leader the opportunity to stretch out and use his<br />
soloing to tell a story. It’s just one of many<br />
musical tales related, with the help of artfully<br />
constructed arrangements, by a pianist successfully<br />
staking his claim as a rising star.<br />
—Philip Booth<br />
Two-Shade: Boogablues; Trapped In Dream; Two Heads One<br />
Pillow; Peace For The Moment; All Of You; Love All Around;<br />
Casiotone Pothole; One Two You; Sunny Day Go; Scrimmage;<br />
You’re Out; Con Alma. (68:42)<br />
Personnel: Gerald Clayton, piano; Joe Sanders, bass; Justin<br />
Brown, drums<br />
» Ordering info: artistshare.com<br />
November 2009 DOWNBEAT 75
Woodshed<br />
SOLO<br />
by Nick van Dijk<br />
Albert Mangelsdorff’s Multiphonic Trombone Solo On ‘Morbidia’<br />
One of the leaders of the European jazz<br />
scene from the mid ’50s until his death in<br />
2005, Albert Mangelsdorff was a true innovator<br />
on the trombone. He took the technique<br />
of multiphonics (introduced to him by Eje<br />
Thelin and Paul Rutherford in the late ’60s)<br />
and made it his trademark. This enabled him<br />
to perform solo improvised trombone concerts,<br />
which he continued to do after his<br />
groundbreaking solo concert at the Munich<br />
Olympic games in 1972.<br />
Multiphonics are achieved by the player<br />
singing into the trombone at the same time as<br />
they play another note that is buzzed with<br />
their lips. It is commonly used by didgeridoo<br />
players, and less commonly on other wind<br />
instruments. As with most advanced techniques,<br />
multiphonic performance requires<br />
some practice to gain control of the pitches<br />
and sounds produced. Because the waves of<br />
the notes both interact through the instrument,<br />
the resulting sound is rich with harmonic<br />
overtones, creating a characteristic gruff and<br />
otherworldly timbre.<br />
Mangelsdorff’s solo on “Morbidia” from<br />
the 1990 solo trombone album Purity alternates<br />
motivic phrases in various clear intervals<br />
with free single-note lines played in the usual<br />
manner. Although he occasionally used the<br />
plunger mute to aid blending the sung and<br />
played sounds, on this track Mangelsdorff<br />
plays open horn. The upper part (notated with<br />
diamond noteheads, stems up) is the falsetto<br />
voice part; all other notes are played convetionally.<br />
The opening phrase (bar 1–2) is used<br />
extensively throughout as the main motif, and<br />
its stepwise dovetailing movement shows the<br />
inter-dependent counterlines that Mangelsdorff<br />
was working towards.<br />
As a soloist, Mangelsdorff developed his<br />
materials in an economic way, giving the listener<br />
a sense of familiarity and adventure at<br />
the same time. For example, most of the single<br />
note “response” lines are similar scalic<br />
ascending passages leading into the upper<br />
reaches of the trombone This is like the phrasing<br />
of flugelhorn player (and sometimes<br />
cohort) Kenny Wheeler. The idea in bar 12 is<br />
developed in bars 31 and 33, and contributes<br />
to a wavelike melodic contour for the solo.<br />
Several times the last played note in a run is<br />
the next sung note in a multiphonic chord,<br />
making it easier to pitch. In order to produce<br />
the specific sound he wants, Mangelsdorff<br />
varies the dynamics subtly throughout to bring<br />
out various under/overtones. On much of his<br />
recorded output, Mangelsdorff used patterns<br />
of set intervals, and this is demonstrated in the<br />
use of fourths in bars 21–23. A nice slowing<br />
down effect is created in bar 18 through use of<br />
small to larger subdivisions of the beat while<br />
the pulse is still felt, showing Mangelsdorff’s<br />
fluid rhythmic concept.<br />
DB<br />
Albert Mangelsdorff<br />
Nick van Dijk is a brass player and jazz educator at<br />
the New Zealand School of Music and is currently<br />
writing a book on multiphonic technique.<br />
JOHN BOOZ<br />
76 DOWNBEAT November 2009
Jazz On Campus<br />
Rodney Whitaker (left), Wessell Anderson and Herlin Riley teach a Michigan State master class<br />
School Notes<br />
COURTESY OF MICHIGAN STATE<br />
Michigan State’s Hands-On Program<br />
Builds Community of Opportunity<br />
No one will ever confuse East Lansing, Mich.,<br />
with New York. But as a training ground for<br />
young musicians, Michigan State University’s<br />
jazz studies program has been building itself as<br />
a formidable alternative, especially in terms of<br />
opportunities it provides. Recent facutly hires<br />
have also improved the student-to-teacher ratio.<br />
“Everybody gets an opportunity to play,”<br />
said bassist Rodney Whitaker, who directs the<br />
program. “We’ve had kids that come to us<br />
whose skills are minimal, but when they leave<br />
they can play. And you wouldn’t get that in<br />
New York, where at most institutions, unless<br />
you can already play, they won’t let you in.”<br />
To emphasize this aspect, the program presents<br />
combo classes and jam sessions at restaurants<br />
and cafes throughout the area. These sessions<br />
feature faculty members and visiting<br />
artists, who serve weeklong residencies several<br />
times a year. Bell’s Pizzeria in East Lansing<br />
serves as the primary venue for these classes<br />
and informal performances. The program also<br />
has hosted events at Oodles of Noodles, Green<br />
River Cafe and Gumbo & Jazz, all which are<br />
located in the city. The exchanges also build a<br />
sense of community between the school’s music<br />
program and the town.<br />
In addition, the program’s 20-piece jazz<br />
orchestra goes on yearly bus tours around<br />
Michigan, and has performed in Japan and at<br />
Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola in New York. A sixday<br />
Jazz Spectacular festival features a handful<br />
of high-profile artists and culminates with the<br />
regional edition of Jazz at Lincoln Center’s<br />
Essentially Ellington. The performers have<br />
included Wynton and Branford Marsalis,<br />
Kenny Barron, Mulgrew Miller, Esperanza<br />
Spalding and Sean Jones.<br />
Michigan State’s teacher-to-student ratio is<br />
eight full-time instructors for an enrollment of<br />
roughly 65 students. Along with Whitaker, the<br />
faculty includes alto player Wessell Anderson,<br />
drummer Randy Gillespie and trumpeter<br />
Etienne Charles, who was hired in August.<br />
The faculty encourages students to work professionally<br />
and Whitaker clarifies that this<br />
doesn’t mean the instructors and students step on<br />
each other for area restaurant and wedding gigs.<br />
“As a student in a prominent program,<br />
you’re competing with the faculty for local<br />
gigs,” Whitaker said. “But we made a commitment<br />
to give all the gigs to the kids. If we do a<br />
local gig, we hire students to play with us.”<br />
Whitaker also includes a wide range of genres<br />
within the jazz program, which, along with<br />
the hands-on experience, has attracted students.<br />
“I’m not completely a jazz player, I’m actually<br />
a classical performer, too,” said junior Kevin<br />
Bene, an alto saxophonist from Bridgewater,<br />
N.J. “So what brought me to Michigan State was<br />
the fact that it’s so well-rounded for saxophone.”<br />
“For me, it’s an easier lifestyle,” added graduate<br />
student Michael Doyle, a tenor player who<br />
turns 42 in January. “Yet the thing I like about<br />
the program is that you’re going to be constantly<br />
challenged by the faculty.”<br />
Whitaker’s experiences as a young musician<br />
growing up in Detroit serve as a template. He<br />
learned to adapt to different music styles and<br />
ensembles, many of which were steeped in pop<br />
music—which is why his curriculum includes<br />
pop, free jazz and gospel, as well as hard bop<br />
and straightahead jazz.<br />
“Everything is not Ellington anymore,”<br />
Whitaker said. “You’ve got to have one foot<br />
in the future and one foot in the past.<br />
Sometimes you’re going to have to play music<br />
from the popular canon, so you have to be<br />
open to all styles of music. You have to play<br />
for the audience.”<br />
—Eric Fine<br />
ERIC ANTONIOU<br />
Fox @ MIT: Pianist Donal Fox has been<br />
named a Martin Luther King visiting artist<br />
at the Massachusetts Institute of<br />
Technology for the 2009–2010 academic<br />
year. Fox will teach musical improvisation<br />
in the school’s music and theater arts<br />
section. The course will study improvisation<br />
techniques in solo and ensemble<br />
contexts and examine relationships<br />
between improvisation, composition and<br />
performance from a score. Details: mit.edu<br />
Berklee’s Montreux Master: Aubrey<br />
Logan, a trombone student, won the<br />
Shure–Montreux Voice Competition at<br />
the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland<br />
on July 14. Details: berklee.edu<br />
Reed Workshop: Singer Ed Reed is offering<br />
a series of vocal workshops through<br />
the Jazzschool in Berkeley, Calif., to a limited<br />
number of students. The first workshop<br />
is Nov. 15. Details: jazzschool.com<br />
‘Chops’ Doc: Bruce Broder’s documentary,<br />
Chops, has been released on DVD.<br />
The film follows high school jazz students<br />
from around the United States as they<br />
prepare for and perform in the Essentially<br />
Ellington High School Jazz Band<br />
Competition and Festival at Jazz at<br />
Lincoln Center in New York.<br />
Details: chopsthemovie.com<br />
Contos Appointed: Paul Contos was<br />
appointed director of the SFJAZZ High<br />
School All-Stars on Sept. 8. Contos is<br />
also a faculty member of University of<br />
Carlifornia–Santa Cruz and Cal State<br />
University, Monterey Bay. Details: sfjazz.org<br />
Vermont Sign-Up: Preregistration is now<br />
open for the July 25–July 30, 2010, session<br />
at Jazz Vermont. Details: jazzcamp.com DB<br />
78 DOWNBEAT November 2009
DB Music Shop<br />
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80 DOWNBEAT November 2009
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ACT Music 47<br />
actmusic.com<br />
Allegro Music 19, 21,<br />
allegro-music.com 23, 25, 84<br />
Anzic Records 67<br />
anzicrecords.com<br />
Blujazz Productions 60<br />
blujazz.com<br />
Cape Town Jazz Festival 37<br />
capetownjazzfest.com<br />
Capri Records 15<br />
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Chicago Sessions 50<br />
chicagosessions.com<br />
Chicago Symphony Orchestra<br />
cso.org 75<br />
Columbia College Chicago 4<br />
colum.edu<br />
Concord Music Group 2, 68<br />
concordrecords.com<br />
Concord Music Group/ 30<br />
Vandoren<br />
concordrecords.com; vandoren.com<br />
Consolidated Artists<br />
Publishing<br />
jazzbeat.com 70<br />
Craviotto Drums 50<br />
craviottodrums.com<br />
Cuneiform Records 66<br />
cuneiformrecords.com<br />
D’Addario Fretted 39<br />
daddario.com<br />
ECM Records 57<br />
ecmrecords.com<br />
Greenleaf Music 52<br />
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HighNote Records 58<br />
jazzdepot.com<br />
Ja Musik 56<br />
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Jamey Aebersold 12<br />
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JamHub 17<br />
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Jazzores Festival 62<br />
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Latin Percussion 72<br />
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Lisa Hilton Music 70<br />
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Mack Avenue Records 61<br />
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Made in Chicago Jazz Festival<br />
estrada.poznan.pl 46<br />
Music Dispatch 72<br />
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Naxos of America 7<br />
jazzicons.com<br />
New School 8<br />
newschool.edu/jazz28<br />
Notable Music 64<br />
notablemusic.net<br />
ObliqSound 71<br />
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Palmetto Records 69<br />
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Peterson Tuners 46<br />
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Resonance Records 65<br />
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Sabian 31<br />
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Sam Ash 38<br />
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Soliloquy Records 73<br />
harryskoler.com<br />
Sonaré Winds 43<br />
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Sunnyside Records 59<br />
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Ted Hogarth Music 64<br />
tedhogarth.com<br />
Telarc/Heads Up 63<br />
telarc.com<br />
Theo Wanne 16<br />
theowanne.com<br />
Vandoren 3<br />
vandoren.com<br />
Vic Firth 9<br />
vicfirth.com<br />
Vox 5<br />
voxvirage.com<br />
Yamaha 83<br />
yamaha.com<br />
Zildjian 11<br />
zildjian.com<br />
Zoho Music 51<br />
zohomusic.com<br />
Zoom 29<br />
soundmakesthemovie.com<br />
Prime Cut Band<br />
Time for a Change<br />
primecutgroup.com<br />
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November 2009 DOWNBEAT 81
Blindfold Test<br />
By Ted Panken<br />
One of the most accomplished drummers of his generation, Bill<br />
Stewart, 42, has propelled Maceo Parker, John Scofield, Michael<br />
Brecker, Pat Metheny, Larry Goldings and Peter Bernstein. This is his<br />
first Blindfold Test.<br />
SFJAZZ Collective<br />
“Frontline” (from Live 2008: 5th Annual Concert Tour, SFJAZZ, 2008) Miguel<br />
Zenón, alto saxophone; Joe Lovano, tenor saxophone; Dave Douglas,<br />
trumpet; Robin Eubanks, trombone; Renee Rosnes, piano; Matt Penman,<br />
bass; Stefon Harris, vibraphone; Eric Harland drums.<br />
The vibes made me think of Dave Holland’s Big Band, but the bassist<br />
didn’t sound like Dave. I liked the opening and closing sections, and the<br />
combined solos with the alto and tenor player, and then the trumpet and<br />
trombone. There were challenging things to catch in the arrangement and<br />
also metrically, but the drummer played this dense music with a nice feeling,<br />
relaxed and grooving, which is hard to do.<br />
Jeff Watts<br />
“Katrina James” (from Watts, Dark Key, 2009) Watts, drums; Branford<br />
Marsalis, tenor saxophone; Terence Blanchard, trumpet; Christian<br />
McBride, bass.<br />
That’s based on a James Brown groove. They put it in 15! A nice metric<br />
modulation thing in the middle, too. I thought of Christian McBride,<br />
because he sometimes does James Brown type things. The drummer was<br />
hitting a little harder than the James Brown style of drumming, and there<br />
was some reverberation.<br />
Bill<br />
Stewart<br />
MARK SHELDON<br />
Mike Clark<br />
“Like That” (from Blueprints In Jazz, Vol.1, Talking House, 2008) Clark,<br />
drums; Christian McBride, bass; Patrice Rushen, piano; Donald Harrison, alto<br />
saxophone; Christian Scott, trumpet; Jed Levy, tenor saxophone.<br />
I liked the feeling, but there are several well-played consecutive solos that<br />
are not distinguished or individualistic. I like how the drummer finessed<br />
the area between even eighth note and swing. The dryness of the cymbal<br />
and interaction between the hi-hat and snare drum reminded me of things<br />
that Jack DeJohnette plays. The alto player had a bluesy thing that<br />
reminded me of Gary Bartz, but I don’t think it’s Gary. I suspect these<br />
are younger players, but something about where the groove sat—even<br />
though he’s interacting, it’s laid-back, not in your face—makes me think<br />
that the drummer isn’t young.<br />
Blue Note 7<br />
“Mosaic” (from Mosaic, Blue Note, 2009) Lewis Nash, drums; Bill Charlap,<br />
piano; Peter Washington, bass; Steve Wilson, alto saxophone; Nicholas<br />
Payton, trumpet; Ravi Coltrane, tenor saxophone; Peter Bernstein, guitar.<br />
The Blue Note 7 project. I enjoyed it, especially Nicholas on trumpet and<br />
Peter on guitar. They have a warm, lyrical solo concept. The bass and<br />
drum playing was exceptionally good. I think Lewis uses two toms. Only<br />
a few people can play swing time on that level—the interaction was happening,<br />
and the balance of the drumset and the ride cymbal sound ... all<br />
high quality and swinging.<br />
Francisco Mela<br />
“Channel 2” (from Cirio: Live At The Blue Note, Half Note, 2008) Mela, drums;<br />
Mark Turner, tenor saxophone; Larry Grenadier, bass.<br />
Those are my friends, Mark Turner, Jeff Ballard and Larry Grenadier,<br />
collectively known as Fly. Oh, not the whole group I liked it. There was<br />
some composition, but mostly it was a springboard for improvising. The<br />
drumming was excellent—lots of sounds from the drums and cymbals, a<br />
groove that Jeff usually tears up. I’m curious which musician isn’t in Fly.<br />
(after) Mela’s playing doesn’t strike me as overtly Cuban, although I’m<br />
sure it’s all in there.<br />
Ignacio Berroa<br />
“Matrix” (from Codes, Blue Note, 2006) Berroa, drums; Gonzalo Rubalcaba,<br />
synthesizers; Edward Simon, piano; John Patitucci, acoustic bass; Armando<br />
Gola, electric bass; David Sanchez, tenor saxophone.<br />
Chick Corea’s “Matrix.” The pianist soloed in a style similar to Chick, but<br />
I don’t think it’s Chick. The switch from acoustic to electric bass reminds<br />
me of John Patitucci. It’s a slick arrangement, well-played, though I can’t<br />
say it grabbed me. The swing section went for a Roy Haynes feeling,<br />
which was cool, but it wasn’t Roy. I think only someone much younger<br />
would play the 6/8 groove. The drum sound was fusiony, a 22-inch bass<br />
drum with pillows or something in it, more funk-sounding as opposed to a<br />
super-crispy snare drum and thuddy toms—not that that’s a bad thing.<br />
John Zorn<br />
“Ravayah” (from Masada–7, Tzadik, 2004) John Zorn, alto saxophone; Dave<br />
Douglas, trumpet; Greg Cohen, bass; Joey Baron, drums.<br />
Mostly a springboard for the drummer, which is good with a good drummer,<br />
as in this case. They played a lot of different, interesting ideas over<br />
that 7/4 vamp. I liked the drum sound, with those Tony Williams references.<br />
The trumpet player had a Don Cherry quality. It’s very good. (after)<br />
Joey is an extremely versatile drummer who could play any gig, but he’s<br />
chosen not to be a jack-of-all-trades.<br />
Kendrick Scott<br />
“View From Above” (from The Oracle, World Culture 2007) Scott, drums;<br />
Seamus Blake, tenor saxophone; Myron Walden, alto saxophone; Aaron Parks,<br />
piano; Mike Moreno, guitar; Derrick Hodges, bass.<br />
It reminds me of Kendrick Scott. That’s Seamus Blake on tenor saxophone.<br />
Is Lage Lund playing guitar I liked the composition, the collective feeling,<br />
the space, and that Kendrick moved the music forward with drum fills that<br />
were complex but well-timed in a way that didn’t step on the music. DB<br />
The “Blindfold Test” is a listening test that challenges the featured artist to discuss and identify<br />
the music and musicians who performed on selected recordings. The artist is then asked<br />
to rate each tune using a 5-star system. No information is given to the artist prior to the test.<br />
82 DOWNBEAT November 2009